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WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 




Copijiiyht by Harris ff Ewimj 



THE PRESIDENT S SMILE 



WASHINGTON CL05L-UP5 

INTIMATE VIEWS OF 
SOME PUBLIC FIGURES 

BY 

EDWARD G. LOWRY 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
1921 



.19 



COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY THE REPUBLIC PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC, 

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY EDWARD G. LOWRY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 






^, 



TO 

S. E. L. 

AND 

E. L. L. 



NOTE 

Some of the chapters In this book have appeared, in 
part, in substance, or in whole, in The New Republic, 
Collier's Weekly, and The Weekly Review. Grateful 
acknowledgment is made to the editors of these 
journals for permission to reprint here such of the 
material as has been published in their columns. 

E. G. L. 

Seven Gates Farm 
Martha's Vineyard 



CONTENTS 

The Washington Scene 3 

Harding : The Great Emollient i i 

CooLiDGE : Foster-Child of Silence 23 

Bryan: Gayly THE Troubadour 34 

Johnson: A Herald with Trumpet 49 

Lost in the Mists 61 

Aide-ing the President 73 

Hays: A Human Flivver 83 

Wood: Our Lone Pro-Consul 92 

The Great Hitchcock Enigma ioi 

Norris: a Native Product 109 

Washington's Hardest Job leo 

From the House Gallery 133 

Remarkable Mr. Adee 144 

Mellon: A Certain Rich Man 152 

McCormick: The Young Vitamine 161 

Hughes: A Man of Substance 168 

Lodge: The Very Best Butter 180 

Why Not Knox? 191 

Hoover: The Friend of All Children 203 

Underwood: He Supplies Balm to Gilead 214 

Borah : The Heart Bowed Down 224 

La Follette : Bob the Battler 233 

Lewis : Lilac and Lilacs 243 

Sims : A First-Class Sailor Man 244 

Pershing: Beau Sabreur, 1921 Model 254 

Taft: In Port at Last 264 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The President's Smile Frontispiece 
The President at Work and at Play 12 
Governor and Mrs. Coolidge 24 
William Jennings Bryan 34 
Senator Hiram W. Johnson 50 
Secretary Hughes and Postmaster-General Hays 84 
Secretary Weeks and General Wood 92 
Senator George W. Norris i 10 
George B. Christian, Jr., Secretary to the Presi- 
dent 120 
Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury 152 
Senator Medill McCormick 162 
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge 180 
Senator P. C. Knox 192 
Herbert Hoover 204 
Senator Oscar W. Underwood 214 
Senator William E. Borah 224 
Senator Robert M. La Follette 234 
Rear-Admiral William S. Sims 244 
What the World War did for General Pershing 254 
The Chief Justice of the United States 264 



WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 



WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 



THE WASHINGTON SCENE 

/Eons upon aeons agone, when the bat- winged ptero- 
dactyl swooped down relentlessly upon its prey, — I 
mean to say a long time ago, — this humid cup in the 
hills that is now the Washington scene may have been 
different; it must have been. With that we have no 
present concern. 

But Washington itself; the Washington of the or- 
ganic act, of the Adamses, John and Quincy, of Martin 
Van Buren, Millard Fillmore, Rutherford B. Hayes, 
Benjamin Harrison, William H. Taft, and Woodrow 
Wilson, is the Washington of Warren G. Harding. 
Regard the eternal changelessness of the two stone 
legs of King Ozymandias in the desert of Egypt and 
attune your mind to the tale I have to tell. 

Come with me into Mr. Harding's front yard and 
let us sit under a flowering magnolia and leisurely, as 
becomes the pure in heart and detached in mind, talk 
about the familiar apparitions who inhabit these 
pleasant walks and tinker with our destiny. 

It passes belief how little is known about Washing- 
ton by the country at large, and yet no city is more 



4 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

written about. Still, it is hardly ever justly appraised 
by the people at home. They seem to see it through 
a refracting and magnifying haze. New York and 
Chicago and San Francisco and St. Louis and New 
Orleans they know and can justly estimate. They are 
visualized clearly, but it is curiously true that almost 
every newcomer to Washington and every visitor 
suffers a sort of stage fright. 

O. Henry in one of his stories tells about a cowboy 
going to New York and being diffident before New 
Yorkers, until he discovered they were people "just 
like Grover Cleveland and Geronimo and the Watson 
boys." No citizen of Danville, Illinois, or Pike County, 
Missouri, or Springfield, Massachusetts, would make 
any average American tongue-tied or step on his feet 
with embarrassment. Yet those three places have 
furnished the last three Speakers of the House of 
Representatives, and the Speaker of the House is a 
great personage in Washington. Tourists to the Capi- 
tol peer into his room with awe, and nudge one another 
furtively and say "That's him," when they pass him 
by happy chance in a corridor. Then they go home and 
talk about it for days and days. 

I do not know why it is that individually the Sena- 
tors and Representatives and Cabinet members are 
always so awe-inspiring to their fellow countrymen, 
while collectively it has always been the fashion to 
disparage them. The late Henry Adams was the very 
greatest of Washington correspondents, though I 



THE WASHINGTON SCENE 5 

should have been afraid so to describe him in his pres- 
ence. He spent a lifetime, from Lincoln's administra- 
tion through Roosevelt's, looking at the Washington 
scene with clear eyes and interpreting the marionettes 
with the coolest, most detached mind that has ever 
been brought to that occupation. When I used to talk 
with him in the latter years of his life I found to my 
dismay that all of my slowly acquired discoveries he 
had known since the sixties, and some of them were 
known to his grandfather before him. Some of his 
impressions gathered between 1840 and 1869 might 
have been written to-day looking at the present as- 
semblage here. 

It is as true now as it was in President Taylor's ad- 
ministration that Senators are a distinct species, and 
that continuous service in Congress produces — a 
Congressman, They have their own easily discernible 
vocational stigmata. They are a distinct sort of human 
being and as easily distinguishable, once you know 
them, as a raw oyster from a cup of tea. The type re- 
produces with astonishing fidelity, despite the greatest 
moral, social, and political convulsions. 

Our system is so arranged that Congressmen must 
necessarily spend two thirds of their time making ar- 
rangements to endeavor to ensure their reelection. I 
do not make any outcry against the system, but it is a 
thing to be pointed out. Six thousand night telegrams 
properly distributed will agitate Congress like a strong 
wind blowing over wheat, so sensitive is it to the possi- 



6 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

ble political effect of anything it may do or leave un- 
done. 

I remember that President Wilson, who never got 
on with Washington easily, never fitted into the scene, 
and, to me, always seemed rather afraid of its allure 
and subtle charm, once said: "The city of Washington 
is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there 
to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking 
about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost 
all the windows of the White House and its offices open 
upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of 
the Potomac and then out into Virginia and on to the 
heavens themselves, and that as I sit there I can con- 
stantly forget Washington and remember the United 
States. Not that I would intimate that all of the 
United States lies south of Washington, but there is a 
serious thing back of my thought. If you think too 
much about being reelected, it is very difficult to be 
worth reelecting. You are so apt to forget that the 
comparatively small number of persons, numerous as 
they seem to be when they swarm, who come to 
Washington to ask for things, do not constitute an 
important proportion of the population of the country, 
that it is constantly necessary to come away from 
Washington and renew one's contacts with the people 
who do not swarm there, who do not ask for anything, 
but who do trust you without their personal counsel to 
do your duty. Unless a man gets these contacts he 
grows weaker and weaker. He needs them as Hercules 



THE WASHINGTON SCENE 7 

needed the touch of mother earth. If you lifted him up 
too high or he lifts himself too high, he loses the con- 
tact and therefore loses the inspiration." 

Washington cries aloud to be written about in an 
intimate, amusing way. It is somehow different from 
other social settlements on the broad expanse of our 
continent. The town has a distinctive social life of its 
own with a flavor and quality slightly tinctured with 
the modes and manners of "abroad." It has, too, a 
seductive charm and glamour all its own. The oddity 
and part of the charm of the Washington condition is 
just this, that while it has the social framework of a 
world capital the chief official personages who people 
the scene are villagers with a villager's outlook and a 
villager's background. This makes for unexpected el- 
lipses and provides conversation. Henry James called 
Washington the "City of Conversation " : "Washington 
talks about herself, and about almost nothing else: 
falling superficially, indeed, on that ground, but into 
line with the other Capitals. .. .It is in positive quest 
of an identity of some sort, much rather — an iden- 
tity other than merely functional and technical — that 
Washington goes forth, encumbered with no ideal of 
avoidance or escape: it is about herself as the City of 
Conversation precisely that she incessantly converses; 
adorning the topic, moreover, with endless ingenuity 
and humor. But that, absolutely, remains the case; 
which thus becomes one of the most thorough, even if 
probably one of the most natural and of the happiest, 



8 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

cases of collective self-consciousness that one knows." 
I couldn't refrain from quoting that bit of rich and 
experienced condensation and observation because it 
is precisely the whole story. People take such dread- 
ful risks when they venture to approach or touch a 
subject that a master has laid a benevolent and pass- 
ing hand upon, even if ever so lightly and in passing. 
Henry James stopped with Henry Adams when he was 
last in Washington. These two are the only men who 
have ever written about this national capital with a 
sureness and skill that illumined and interpreted their 
subject. Many others have been conscious, but, as it 
proved, vaguely and dimly, of the scene they have 
sought to portray. 

It all comes down to this: Washington is a curious 
and delightful place; it is so full of the most refreshing 
and striking contrasts. The capital of a country of a 
hundred million, and the center of statesmanship, 
diplomacy, and high politics, its citizens write hot and 
hasty letters to the powers that be, protesting that 
hawks devour their Pekin ducks, and that rabbits 
come after their corn. They argue gravely the con- 
stitutionality of their right of defense against these 
depredations. 

Washington is the most feminine of all cities. It has 
grace and loveliness and many wanton wiles, and, 
above all, that elusive quality and attribute that for 
want of a better name we call charm. Its seductive- 
ness and glamour have drawn many a good, homespun 



THE WASHINGTON SCENE 9 

citizen away from the hay, grain, and feed business, 
where he belonged, into the political morass of office- 
holders. It has the same effect on small- town people 
that Cleopatra had on Anthony; it makes them forget 
their homefolks and have dreams which do not come 
true 

Politicians are great men in Washington and get 
their names in the newspapers, and hold their jobs just 
so long as they remember their home towns. When 
they forget their origins ; when they begin to think of 
themselves as being "big men" in and of themselves 
rather than as delegated spokesmen for their constit- 
uencies, they wither and die. I often think of Wash- 
ington as being like a flower show. Nothing grows 
here, but every community sends what it deems at the 
moment to be its choicest product. So long as these 
budding, flowering plants remember that their tap- 
root is in Augusta, Maine; or Terre Haute; or Red 
Oak, Iowa; or Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and must be 
watered and nourished there, they thrive; but when 
they forget it, they become just cut flowers and their 
end is at hand. 

So in this scene life proceeds from one crisis to 
another. But do not despair of the Republic. The 
only thing one can be sure about in a crisis or situa- 
tion or condition at Washington is that it is not un- 
precedented ; it has happened before. Washington can- 
not be seen intelligently or to any effect without a 
background. It produces crises and periods of welter 



10 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

and confusion in such regularly recurring cycles as to 
be almost susceptible to the formulation of a law of 
natural phenomena. Certainly the sons and descend- 
ants of Jeremiah have rended their garments, beat 
their breasts, and made loud lamentation before the 
Capitol and the White House after each of our war 
periods. They sat about In bewilderment as they sit 
now, and will again, saying to one another, "Was 
there ever such an extraordinary situation? Was there 
ever such another mess as we find ourselves In now? 
Was there ever such another set of dolts, knaves, and 
incompetents In command of our destinies?" The 
answer Is: There was. This Is not the first time that 
the wind has moaned through the rigging. 

What Washington Is at any period it has been and 
fearfully will be again. It stumbles, but It never falls. 
Against this background and In this scene, I ask, by 
your leave, to exhibit some of the apparitions and 
figures I have encountered. They are a diverse lot and 
all of them have Interested me, as I hope they will 
interest you. 



HARDING: THE GREAT EMOLLIENT 

Politically Mr. Harding belongs to the same age, 
era, epoch, or period as the wooden Indians who used 
to stand so massively, so passively, and so innocu- 
ously In front of cigar shops. He is as old-fashioned as 
that. A flower of the period before safety razors, when 
all the barber shops had shelves for their customers' 
gilt-lettered private shaving-mugs, and the Police 
Gazette passed from hand to hand on Sunday mornings 
while the hay, grain, and feed man and the elderly 
harness-maker took a fearful joy in gazing at Pauline 
Hall's delectable and columnar legs. Then to church 
before a fried-chicken dinner, a nap, and a walk with 
the children in the afternoon. 

Pastoral days, peaceful days, idyllic days, but, now, 
alas! gone where the woodbine twine th, as the poet 
said. No flivvers; no collective bargaining; no high 
cost of living; no small and oppressed nationalities; 
the railroad problem was how to get a pass; no "in- 
dustrial unrest"; no Reds; no grisly specters of 
Soviets; no coal shortage; no mandates or Article X; 
hired men worked all day every day, and on Sundays 
put on a hat with a red lining specially designed for 
the country trade and went buggy- riding; no mass 
urgings and surgings toward God knows what goal. 

Such were the palmy days in which were formed the 



12 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

character, habits, and poHtical philosophy of Warren 
GamaHel Harding. He has not changed with the times. 

The President can "keynote." I have heard him. 
"Keynoting" implies the ability to make melodic 
noises and give the impression of passionately and 
torrentially moving onward and upward while warily 
standing still. Temperament under perfect control 
does the trick. It has its attendant dangers some- 
times. Once upon a time there was a young fellow 
tried it with a girl down in Georgia. She was a nice, 
sensible, common-sense sort of girl, and she liked the 
boy. He used to come over to her house nearly every 
night and they would sit on the porch behind the 
honeysuckle and morning-glory vines. The boy could 
talk, and nearly every night he would play her a piece 
on his bazoo. She liked it, too; but, when she would 
go upstairs to bed and, while she was combing her 
hair, add up what he had said, she couldn't remember 
anything that would warrant her in beginning to pick 
out her bridesmaids. Nothing was happening and 
time was getting along. One night, under the influence 
of a soft moon and a mocking-bird, the boy began to 
silver tongue. She stood it just as long as she could, 
and then she called for a showdown. She put her hand 
on his arm. "Claude," she said softly, "if that's a 
proposal, I'm your huckleberry; but if it's a descrip- 
tion of the scenery, look out for the dog." 

I think Mr. Harding ought to know that story; 
that's why I tell it. The present temper and mood of 




THE PRESIDENT AT WORK AND AT PLAY 



HARDING 13 

most folks these days seems to be to get down to cases 
and find out what ails us. 

It was privily urged upon one of the functionaries of 
Mr. Wilson's entourage a little while before that ad- 
ministration came to an end that it would be a shrewd 
and clever thing to do, a good "publicity stunt," to 
throw open the gates of the White House and make 
the grounds and the accessible state rooms of the 
presidential edifice free again to the public. The sug- 
gestion was denied admittance. Had it been heeded, 
Mr. Harding would have been deprived of what 
proved to be a most effective gesture as he began his 
term of residence at Number 1600 Pennsylvania 
Avenue. 

It beats all what a change has come over the spirit 
and manners and disposition of this town since Mr. 
Harding came in. I don't know how long it will last. 
It is too idyllic to last forever. Partly this new mani- 
festation of peace on earth good-will to men is due to 
opening the White House gates, but mostly it is due 
to Mr. Harding himself. He has undeniably made a 
good start. He made an immensely favorable first 
impression. He got started off on the right foot. He 
quickly won for himself a great body of local favorable 
public opinion. That was so startling and vivid a con- 
trast to the condition that had prevailed here for some 
time that it assumed, temporarily at least, an appear- 
ance of tremendous significance and importance. 

In the local area now under observation, at any 



14 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

rate, the normalcy, so long ago set forth as one of the 
chief ends to be attained, has been achieved. 

For a long time the social-political atmosphere of 
Washington had been one of bleak and chill austerity 
suffused and envenomed by hatred of a sick chief 
magistrate that seemed to poison and blight every 
ordinary human relationship and finally brought to a 
virtual stoppage every routine function of the Govern- 
ment. It was a general condition of stagnation and 
aridity that had come to affect everybody here. The 
White House was isolated. It had no relation with the 
Capitol or the local resident and official community. 
Its great iron gates were closed and chained and 
locked. Policemen guarded its approaches. It was in a 
void apart. Almost from the beginning it had seemed 
to the sensitive local intelligence to exhale a chill and 
icy disdain for the chief subordinate figures and per- 
sonages who under the President comprise the per- 
sonnel of the Washington community. This may have 
been imagination, but it had the full effect of a reality. 
It all made for bleakness and bitterness and a general 
sense of frustration and unhappiness. 

Now the chief thing to report at this early period of 
the new dispensation is that this miasmatic vapor has 
been dissipated overnight. The Washington atmos- 
phere to-day is that of Old Home Week or a college 
class reunion. The change is amazing. The populace 
is on a broad grin — old familiar figures have reap- 
peared out of an eight-year seclusion. Countenances 



HARDING 15 

that one feared had lost the art or knack of beaming 
now radiate warmth and light and good cheer. Dis- 
tinctly the sunny side is up. Indeed, I venture to sus- 
pect that not since the halcyon days when Sandford 
and Merton sat in the garden with the ineffable Mr. 
Barlow, and discoursed together on the joys and re- 
wards of a virtuous life, has there been so much of 
sweetness and harmony and light susceptible to local 
observation and sympathetic record. It is just sweet, 
as Grizel used to put it to Tommy the while her eyes 
were little wells of gladness. 

It must have been like this aforetime when the morn- 
ing stars sang together and the little hills skipped for joy. 
For there is no remembrance with us of former days. 

It is now possible for any decent citizen of the Re- 
public, becomingly appareled, to enter the east portico 
or extension of the White House and proceed along the 
corridor or passage, where were 'displayed the fish- 
plates, sauce-boats, and other ceramic remains of the 
Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce administrations, 
and so on up the broad stairs that lead to the historic 
East Room, where once the White House washing 
hung and which more recently has been given over to 
private moving-picture shows for the diversion of an 
ill President. From here it is but a step to ascend or 
descend the chromatic scale of the presidential parlors 
— Red, Blue, Green. This historic little journey over 
ground long an inviolate sanctuary has been taken by 
thousands since the inaugural. 



t6 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

• In the very first flush of the new freedom, eager, 
ardent visitors stood in a compact mass under the 
north portico or main entrance and stared their fill at 
all who came and went from the White House. Some 
of the bolder ventured up the steps and did a 
collective Little-Mabel-with-her-face-against-the-pane 
through the front windows. I do not cite this as a 
model of good manners or as a practice that should be 
encouraged, but it gave thousands pleasure, it satis- 
fied an eager curiosity and craving for an actual con- 
tact with and sight of the occupants of the White 
House, and it proved to be as tactful and effective a 
gesture as could have been devised to indicate that a 
page had been turned in our political history. 

The news has gone all over the country that the 
White House is open again, and it has been given an 
interpretation and significance far beyond its value. 
I report it here as one of the things that helped Mr. 
Harding most in the opening days of his administra- 
tion and gave him a decided impetus along the high- 
way of public favor. It has given him a stock of good 
opinion which he will have need to draw upon, unless 
I miss my guess. 

But it is in the White House ofiices, where Mr. 
Harding spends his days, that the questing analyst 
finds in greatest profusion and richness the signs and 
indications of the new order. These rooms and car- 
peted passages, lately so deserted and forlorn, are now 
packed and running over. All of the people you used 



HARDING 17 

to read about in the newspapers twelve years ago, 
when Mr. Taft became President, are there; and a lot 
of new ones that you never heard of, but will if they 
have any luck. Just at the moment these patriots and 
fellow countrymen, now rescued from their long 
hibernation, want jobs or have friends who want jobs. 
Some few of them, however, just want to "pay their 
respects," revisit an old familiar scene and perhaps 
meet a kindly correspondent who will put a little 
piece in the papers about them. It is these recurring 
figures, long absent from this environment and now so 
unaffectedly glad to be back and on terms with the 
White House, who give the atmosphere of Old Home 
Week to these pleasant walks and meetings. 

My first contact with Mr. Harding himself was as 
fleeting and casual as the kiss of two billiard balls, and 
yet I brought away with me three bright and vivid, if 
vagrant and irrelevant, impressions. The first is that 
like all Ohio statesmen he wears trousers that are too 
long. I don't know why this should be so, but it is. I 
think the feeling against "high- water pants" as indi- 
cating a countryman or "hick" must have been 
peculiarly virulent in Ohio thirty or forty years ago, 
for all her present generation of public men like their 
trousers to hang in folds about their ankles. 

This, at any rate, was the explanation given me by 
one of the State's Congressmen years ago when we 
discussed this esoteric topic. I hadn't thought of this 
for a long time until I noticed that Mr. Harding rigidly 



i8 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

conforms to the convention. Subsequent contacts de- 
veloped that some one had been at him and shortened 
his suspenders. It makes all the difference. 

The second impression I brought away is that the 
President has, at least, two pet words that he uses 
constantly. They are "becoming" and "seemly." I 
think it will be observed of him, as he becomes a more 
intimate and accustomed apparition to all of us, that 
he cannot talk very long on any subject without using 
one of these two words and, perhaps, both of them. I 
present this facet to the Freudians. Let them make 
what they can of it. 

The third impression that I have to set down was 
the first and the strongest Mr. Harding makes upon 
every one. I mean the essential kindliness and kind- 
ness that fairly radiate from him. He positively gives 
out even to the least sensitive a sense of brotherhood 
and innate good-will toward his fellow man. With it 
he imparts a certain sense of simpleness and trustful- 
ness, an easy friendliness, an acceptance of people he 
meets as good fellows. It is in his eyes, in his voice, in 
his manners. I'll wager that saying "no" is one of the 
most difficult things he does. Abou Ben Adhem, I 
believe, would have taken to him like a shot. 

This outstanding trait of easy good-fellowship and 
good-will was exhibited to unusual advantage in his 
first meeting with the Washington correspondents. 
It had been arranged for Mr. Harding to receive the 
writing men at twelve-thirty o'clock on the day of the 



HARDING 19 

first cabinet meeting, and after that session had ended, 
but it was one-thirty before the correspondents were 
invited into the circular presidential office. At that 
time Mr. Harding made himself easier of access than 
any good dentist, for, at least, with a dentist in fair 
practice one has to make an appointment a week in 
advance, but, in the beginning, the President allowed 
some Senators and such-like important persons to 
"run in" on him. This easy, friendly practice, which 
Mr. Taft also had in his first days, threw his whole 
schedule of appointments out of gear, and caused him 
to run behind the time-table the competent White 
House stafif arranged for him. Mr. Harding will have 
to guard his time, as he will soon learn. He is the most 
besought person, perhaps, in the whole world, and his 
hours must be carefully apportioned among the be- 
siegers lest he be overwhelmed. 

By a happy chance I also attended Mr. Wilson's 
first meeting with the Washington correspondents, 
and, as there can be no fair trial of speed without a 
pace maker, I remembered that chill and correct per- 
formance, for the chief interest in Washington these 
days is in the sharp and striking contrast between 
what is and what was. Mr. Wilson stood behind his 
desk, his visitors filed in and stood in a thickened 
crescent before him. There was a pause, a cool silence, 
and presently some one ventured a tentative question. 
It was answered crisply, politely, and in the fewest 
possible words. A pleasant time was not had by all. 



20 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

Mr. Harding showed another approach. He met 
the incoming throng at the door and shook hands with 
every one of them. For most of them he had an indi- 
vidual word of greeting. Apparently it was the most 
natural thing in the world for him to do. He made it a 
very simple, unaffected action. The men had come in 
such numbers that they completely encircled the 
room in a triple ring. Mr. Harding was in the center 
of the circle, very much at his ease, leaning against 
and half sitting upon the edge of his flat-topped desk. 
He did not wait for questions, but began to talk, an 
easy, gossipy chat about the first cabinet meeting of 
his administration. He went on to other things. He 
knew the professional Interests of his hearers. He told 
them "the story" of what they came to hear. He 
talked frankly, but not indiscreetly. The whole ar- 
ranged, premeditated contact was free of constraint 
or any hint of stiffness. 

Day by day Mr. Harding is being bodied forth to 
the country as a genial, kindly, generous, good-hearted, 
big fellow who loves his fellow man, who loves simple 
things, who is without austerity or bitterness, who is 
not cantankerous, who Is easy to get along with. In 
point of fact this all may be true. The impression is 
given out partly naturally and Involuntarily by Mr. 
Harding himself in his daily relations with his visitors 
and partly by skilled and unostentatious arrangement. 

Almost every day delegations come to see the Presi- 
dent. Almost every one of them Is taken out on the 



HARDING 21 

stretch of turf between the south portico and the 
executive offices, and in front of the latticed enclosures 
where the White House laundry is hung, and photo- 
graphed with Mr. Harding. Almost all of these photo- 
graphs are reproduced in the newspapers. You must 
have seen many of them. They show Mr. Harding 
with a kindly smile on his face. He takes a good pic- 
ture, and his bold features reproduce well in the 
coarse-screen half-tones that the newspapers use. It 
is effective publicity and quite legitimate. These re- 
produced scenes of the chief magistrate among his 
people gratify a natural craving. The people who are 
taken with the President and their friends like the 
pictures. The newspapers print them because they 
are news and because they interest readers. In this 
way you may have seen Mr. Harding in the White 
House garden with printers, golf players, Boy Scouts, 
Girl Scouts, boys who wanted a subscription for a 
swimming-pool, Einstein of relativity fame with his 
hair every which way — as Senator Spooner's used to 
stand — and looking as startled as a Thomson's 
gazelle; in brief, representatives of every type and 
group of men and women this broad Republic can 
offer. 

I do not think Mr. Harding has greatly altered the 
opinion that was held before of his substance, his qual- 
ities, and his capacities, but by his kindliness and 
affability he has notably affected and increased leni- 
ency of judgment. I have noticed that people who 



22 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

come in contact with him cease to speak of him or 
judge him detachedly. They say good-humoredly 
when his name comes up, "But after all he is a good 
scout. He wants to do what is right. Give him a 
chance. He's got a hard job to fill and he is doing his 
best." 

That feeling is a decided and enviable asset for any 
President to have. It extends to the press. The corre- 
spondents still attend in unprecedented numbers Mr. 
Harding's bi-weekly audiences. They find these meet- 
ings useful. They get news. These contacts are repro- 
duced in a thousand places. The President is presented 
as he presents himself with all his native kindliness and 
appealing qualities to the fore. 

So far then has Mr. Harding disclosed himself to the 
resident microscopists, as he stands in the porch of his 
high adventure and great emprise. The quality he 
has shown the correspondents has had its effect upon 
the Senate and all of Washington. He has revealed 
himself as the great emollient that was needed to 
soothe, to heal, and to relax the angry, inflamed, 
jangled, querulous local condition and situation. But 
this is only the beginning. Whether he has sterner 
qualities, whether he has toughness of fiber, whether 
he can endure strains and stresses, whether he can 
withstand pressure, whether he has taste and discrimi- 
nation — in fine, whether he is a strong man fit to be 
President, must yet be proved. 



COOLIDGE: FOSTER-CHILD OF SILENCE 

The elections of 1920 imported into the City of Con- 
versation, as one of its necessary consequences, per- 
haps the oddest and most singular apparition this vocal 
and articulate settlement has ever known : a politician 
who does not, who will not, who seemingly cannot talk. 
A well of silence. A center of stillness. 

Moreover, it appears from the meager record that he 
thinks of himself as Peter Pan, the boy who never grew 
up to be a man. 

We had, of course, all heard of Calvin Coolidge ; that 
he had been City Councilman, City Solicitor, Court 
Clerk, State Representative, Mayor, State Senator, 
Lieutenant-Governor, and Governor in Massachusetts ; 
that he had held one public job after another virtually 
continuously since 1899; that being in place and in 
politics was with him a vocation and an avocation. 
But the man himself as a social human being was not 
known at all. There was a bright curiosity to be satis- 
fied. 

Presiding over the Senate is the least of the duties of 
the Vice-President of the United States in the Wash- 
ington scheme of things. What time he spends at the 
Capitol saying, " Does the Senator from South Dakota 
yield to the Senator from Mississippi?" or, "The 
Senator from New Hampshire suggests the absence 



24 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

of a quorum. The clerk will call the roll," or, when the 
calendar is being called, "The bill will be passed 
over," is his period of reflection and digestion. His 
day's work really begins when he gets to his hotel in 
the evening and finds his dress-clothes laid out on the 
bed and Mrs. Coolidge tells him, "We are dining with 
Senator Whosis to-night and you must be dressed and 
ready to leave here at a quarter to eight." His dress- 
clothes are his working clothes ; the overalls of a Vice- 
President. 

By tradition and precedent the Vice-President has 
become the official diner-out of the Administration. 
Every night from November until May he must sally 
forth in his glad raiment and eat for his party and his 
chief. He and the potted palms that the close observer 
of official life notes being hauled from one house to 
another every afternoon during the season are social 
fixtures. No big dinner is complete without both of 
them. The palms stand in the corners and on the 
stairways. 

Anciently it was a game, mildly diverting, to scratch 
one's name on the under side of the fronds and then 
keep tab to see how many times one encountered the 
same palms during the winter season. The palms are 
background, but the Vice-President is essentially fore- 
ground. He sits on the right of the hostess. He is the 
chief figure of the feast. The palms are, or are sup- 
posed to be, decorative. The Vice-President seldom or 
never is. The theory is that he is witty and amusing, or 




Copyright by Undenvood !f Underwood 

GOVERNOR AND MRS. COOLIDGE 
A Costume for a Campaign Picture 



COOLIDGE 25 

learned and informative, or a well of deep inside stuff 
about current political affairs. 

Now as it turns out Mr. Coolidge is none of these 
things. To the whole of Washington, social and politi- 
cal, to this juncture, he presents an impenetrable 
blank. He dines out with the best of them. Never a 
night elapses that the big closed car placed at his serv- 
ice by the fond taxpayers does not convey him to a 
dinner party. No soup, however thick or thin, deters 
him, no fish, however disguised by the pallid, viscous 
goo the chefs seem to like, daunts him, and thence 
south through the entree to the ice. And all in perfect 
silence. 

No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung; 
Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung. 
Majestic silence! 

But I must say it is hard on the ladies. They often 
talk about it. They are supposed to make him have a 
good time. And having a good time at dinner is popu- 
larly supposed to be indicated by a light rattle of small 
talk. One hears that Mr. Coolidge feels sometimes 
that he is not doing all that is expected of him, for 
there are vague current reports that he asks wonder- 
ingly, "What do they talk about? I hear them and 
see them all about me, all at it, but what do they find 
to say?" One agreeable woman was the nine days' 
wonder and envy of all Washington because she made 
him laugh one night at dinner. She never would give 
the recipe or tell what she said. " I am going to use it 
again next winter," she declared thriftily. 



26 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

But every one who has contrived to strike a response 
from the close-mouthed and eminent figure has not 
been so reticent. Some of the ladies have told the 
formula they have used to effect an entrance. From 
them I learn that the equivalent of open sesame to one 
small compartment of conversation is an appreciative 
reference to Vermont. It does not disclose great 
vistas, nor does it reveal anything that is not already 
set down in the present-day geographies, but it does 
serve to provoke a mild simulation of dinner-table 
chatter. The subject has, moreover, an apparently un- 
ending interest. It can be employed four or five times 
by the same person. And so it comes about that some, 
at least, women, who are virtually sure to sit beside 
Mr. Coolidge when they are at dinner together, have 
made an intensive study of Vermont; its geography, 
its climate, its mineral and agricultural resources, its 
population, its scenery, the conformation of its hills 
and the configuration of its valleys, its industries, its 
census figures — everything, in fine, but its politics. 
That is something that is never spoken of. And when 
you come to think of it, the natural resources of 
Vermont, such as they are, are quite the safest and 
sanest subject in the world, as a subject of conversa- 
tion which may be repeated. They never got anybody 
into trouble. And that, of course, is something. 

I gather that our hero has always been like this; 
that from his boyhood he has dreaded meeting people 
if It involved exchanging words with them. It makes 



COOLIDGE 27 

his career as a politician, in so vocal and clamorous a 
constituency as ours, all the more conspicuous and 
odd. He is never seen in public places. He does not 
consort with groups as do other politicians. He is 
close, close, close, and as detached as a villa site. His 
letters are even briefer than his spoken words. One 
that I know about consists merely of one word and the 
initials "C. C." If this is a fair sample, and I assume 
that it is, when his life and letters come to be pub- 
lished, they can be issued on one octavo postal card. 

In common with every one else at Washington I 
have been eager to pluck out the heart of Mr. Cool- 
idge's mystery, to discover what sort of man he 
is, to establish a basis for appraisal. And all in vain, 
for he has revealed nothing, disclosed nothing. He has 
been described and observed as intently as was possible 
under the circumstances in the crush preceding the 
largest and gayest of dinner parties, standing quite 
still and saying not a blessed word, though all about 
him were babble and laughter and conversation. He 
didn't seem ill at ease or embarrassed or tongue-tied. 
He was just still. Silent upon a peak in Darien is no 
name for it. He gave no appearance of being about to 
say something presently. It was an absolute calm. 
Old Ironsides at anchor lay in the harbor of Mahon. 
The waves to sleep had gone — that sort of thing. Not 
a leaf stirring. It was impressive — and he so small. 
A big man can be as monosyllabic as he pleases, but 
more is expected of slight men. 



28 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

One sought in vain an account of the experiences of 
those veterans of forlorn hopes who in the devoted pur- 
suance of social duties had dashed themselves against 
the ice barrier. They had nothing to tell. Over the 
Alps lay Italy, they thought, but none of them had 
won the summit, and so they couldn't be sure that the 
view was worth the climb. 

The only thing left to do was to go back and search 
the records, to exhume fossil remains, to study the nar- 
ratives left by the explorers who had been on the same 
trail. When President Meiklejohn of Amherst, in the 
course of his duty, conferred the degree of Doctor of 
Laws on Mr. Coolidge, he complimented him on teach- 
ing the value of "adequate brevity." He could not 
have done less. He might easily have gone on and done 
more. What may be termed Mr. Coolidge's "short 
game" with our common tongue is worthy of all the 
admiring comments that can be bestowed upon it. But 
his lightness and delicacy of touch in sinking his short 
putts when he has got the English language on the 
green approaches the marvelous. He is a master of 
the reversible short sentence that can be read from 
either direction without losing the force of its impact. 

A paper of his on the nature of politics ends with 
the sentence, "Destiny Is in you." Just like that. 
"Destiny is in you." It means — whatever you want 
it to mean. It is compact. It is polished. It is senten- 
tious, and it gives all the appearance of being a dis- 
tillation of profound thought. 



COOLIDGE 29 

One night in the long ago a press agent came to 
our newspaper to tell the dramatic reporter about a 
dancer he was bringing to our town and how light- 
footed she was. He was voluble in his praise of her 
fairy feet. "Listen," he said; "this little lady could 
walk on bubbles from the Battery to Harlem Bridge 
and never bust a bub." And so he whom I now sing 
walks circumspectly through the lush meadows of 
English speech, never crushing a flower, while he 
plucks his modest posies. He diversifies his literary 
nosegays. 

A phrase to Capital: "Hisrory reveals no civilized 
people among whom there were not a highly educated 
class, and large aggregations of wealth, represented 
usually by the clergy and the nobility. Inspiration 
has always come from above. . . . Large profits mean 
large pay rolls. But profits must be the result of serv- 
ice performed "^ 

And then a word to Labor: "Statutes must appeal 
to more than material welfare. Wages won't satisfy, 
be they never so large. Nor houses ; nor lands ; nor cou- 
pons, though they fall thick as the leaves of autumn. 
Man has a spiritual nature. Touch it, and it must 
respond as the magnet responds to the pole. To that, 
not to selfishness, let the laws of the Commonwealth 
appeal. Recognize the immortal worth and dignity of 
man. Let the laws of Massachusetts proclaim to her 
humblest citizen, performing the most menial task, 

1 Have Faith in Massachusetts. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919. 



30 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

the recognition of his manhood, the recognition that 
all men are peers, the humblest with the most exalted, 
the recognition that all work is glorified." 

But it was Mr. Coolidge's disquisition on the na- 
ture of politics that I sought most hopefully while 
trying to find out and report about him. I looked to 
see what he had to say about the office-holders and 
found this: "But the fact remains that office brokerage 
is here held in reprehensive scorn and professional 
office-seeking in contempt. Every native-born Amer- 
ican, however, is potentially a President, and it must 
always be remembered that the obligation to serve 
the State is forever binding upon all, although office is 
the gift of the people. . . . Another reason why polit- 
ical life of this nature is not chosen as a career is 
that it does not pay. . . . Few prominent members of 
Congress are dependent on their salary, which is but 
another way of saying that in Washington Senators 
and Representatives need more than their official 
salaries to become most effective. 

"... But I do not feel that there is any more obliga- 
tion to run for office than there is to become a banker, 
a merchant, a teacher, or enter any other special occu- 
pation. As indicated, some men have a particular 
aptitude in this direction and some have none. Of 
course experience counts here as in any other human 
activity, and all experience worth the name is the re- 
sult of application, of time and thought and study and 
practice. If the individual finds he has liking and 



COOLIDGE 31 

capacity for this work, he will involuntarily find him- 
self engaged in it. There is no catalogue of such capa- 
city. One man gets results in one way, another in 
another. But in general only the man of broad 
sympathy and deep understanding of his fellow-men 
can meet with much success." 

I won't pretend to discern an autobiographical 
note in that, though some persons gifted with quicker 
divination may. At any rate, no exception can be 
taken to it by even the most critical, nor of such pro- 
nouncements as these: 

"We live under a republican form of government. 
We need forever to remember that representative 
government does represent. A careless, indifferent 
representative is the result of a careless, indifferent 
electorate." 

"There are selfishness and injustice and evil in the 
world " 

"There will come out of government exactly what 
is put into it." 

"Society gets about what it deserves." 

"Of course the present estimate is not the ultimate. 
There are men here who appear important that will 
not appear so in years to come." 

The one personal reference I find in this discourse 
on politics is this: "Cannon has said of McKinley that 
his ear was so close to the ground that it was full of 
grasshoppers." 

You will easily perceive that the Vice-President is 



32 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

no trouble-maker. He does not introduce new and 
strange elements in an already disordered world. He 
clings fast to the established doctrine. He sings the 
old songs. He likes the familiar known things. In the 
old parliamentary phrase he calls for the regular order. 
He never does the unexpected or the surprising thing. 
He is not the first, or even the second or third, by whom 
the new is tried. His career in politics is proof that a 
substantial element among us approve just that sort 
of thing. 

On the day of the first Cabinet meeting of the Hard- 
ing administration all the newspaper correspondents 
in Washington, and apparently all the movie operators 
and camera men east of a line drawn north and south 
through Pittsburgh, attended at the executive offices 
to make a pictorial and descriptive record of the new- 
comers, for the enlightenment and education of the 
dear ones at home. The photographers ran as wild as 
deuces. They took pictures of the Cabinet members 
and the President, collectively and individually, in- 
doors and outdoors, in motion and standing still, and 
finally a series of prints of the Cabinet in session. Mr. 
Coolidge sat with the Cabinet. It was an innovation. 
He was pictured in his place at the Cabinet table sit- 
ting with the others. When the meeting was over, the 
correspondent of the Boston Transcript, seeking a 
paragraph of local interest to enliven his dispatch, 
greeted the great man and asked : 

"Mr. Vice-President, where did you sit at the Cabi- 



COOLIDGE 33 

net table? What place was allotted you in the order of 
precedence?" 

Mr. Coolidge considered thoughtfully. He weighed 
the possibilities of any hasty speech. He thought 
deeply. Then he said, slowly: 

"I had rather any announcement on that point 
should come directly from the President." 

When he chooses he has the power of condensed epi- 
grammatic expression. Take this bit, for example: 
"Do the day's work. If it be to protect the rights of 
the weak, whoever objects, do it. If It be to help a 
powerful corporation better to serve the people, what- 
ever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a 
stand-patter, but don't be a stand-patter. Expect to 
be called a demagogue, but don't be a demagogue. 
Don't hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. 
Don't hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplica- 
tion table. Don't expect to build up the weak by pull- 
ing down the strong. Don't hurry to legislate. Give 
administration a chance to catch up with legislation." 

Before the microscoplsts at Washington are done 
with him, he will be catalogued and indexed and cross- 
referenced. He is under scrutiny. Before his term of 
office is over, though he may continue dumb as any 
oracle, he will be known, measured, weighed, ap- 
praised, and valued for what he Is. 

I know competent questers who are hot on the trail. 
For the present they make only provisional verdicts on 
this foster-child of Silence and slow Time. He is a 
type entirely new to Washington. 



BRYAN: GAYLY THE TROUBADOUR 

Mr. Bryan is one of the great troubadours, and as 
such I sing him. Never in our time was another such as 
he. Troubadouring is the thing he does best. It is 
really his vocation. He enjoys it. Faring forth with 
him among the constituencies is an experience full of 
lights and shadows and picturesque and dramatic 
incidents. 

The open season for troubadours is in the two mel- 
low months preceding the November presidential elec- 
tion. This is the time of the real singing. It is the time 
of "swinging around the circle." The candidates for 
the presidency have to go out and perform whether 
or not they are troubadours and have any love for it. 
Cox and Harding left no traditions. Neither Taft nor ' 
Wilson was a real troubadour. Bryan and Roosevelt 
were, and Bryan is the best of them all. He likes it all : 
the early rising, the crowded days, the bands, the tur- 
moil, the shouting and applause. He doesn't mind the 
queer food, because he eats only milk toast in towns 
that don't have a first-class preeidential postmaster. 
He can sleep anywhere and at any time. Therefore, 
it used to seem odd, to one who knew his backgrounds, 
to see Mr. Bryan sitting in the State Department in 
an environment of braided one-button morning coats, 
and an atmosphere of burning sealing wax suggesting 
secrecy. Somehow he didn't seem to fit into the picture. 




Copyright by Harris S( Ewing 

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 



BRYAN 35 

Quite aside from the desire to make money, Mr. 
Bryan's appearances on the Chautauqua circuit after 
he became Secretary of State came from a Hking for 
that sort of thing. The general criticism at that time 
was that it was a pretty poor sort of business for a 
Secretary of State ; but that aspect of the affair did 
not mean anything to Mr. Bryan. His habits are fixed, 
and one of them is to speak at Chautauquas. He would 
probably have done the same had he been President. 
One of the things Mr. Bryan's critics do not under- 
stand is that all of his broad experience and the changes 
in his personal fortunes have not affected any of the 
essential qualities of his character. In his daily walk 
and habits he is the same man now that he was twenty- 
five years ago. Being Secretary of State made no differ- 
ence to him. He could not understand that as Secre- 
tary of State he could not say and do things that he had 
been doing without public criticism all the years. It 
was an impropriety for a Secretary of State to appear 
on the platform the same evening with itinerant 
troupes of entertainers. It had never been accounted 
an impropriety for W. J. Bryan, private citizen, to 
appear in such an environment. Mr. Bryan made no 
distinction. 

Let me begin at the beginning and attempt to tell 
the story of a day, which began at one o'clock on an 
October morning at Lincoln, and ended at eleven 
o'clock that night when the train pulled out from Cedar 
Rapids for Chicago. The Peerless Leader made fifteen 



36 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

speeches in that interval and shook hands with many 
thousands of admiring farmers and railroad shop men. 

Mr. Bryan spoke the preceding night at Havelock 
to a throng of railway employees. It was cold and raw 
and drizzling, and the black mud was sticky underfoot. 
He got back into Lincoln, very hoarse, on a trolley car, 
about midnight, and had supper up in Frank Richards's 
rooms, with the five correspondents who were traveling 
with him and his secretary. Bob Rose. Richards was 
the proprietor of the hotel at Lincoln. The cold fried 
chicken, the sliced tomatoes, and the bread-and-butter 
sandwiches were finished, and the party came down- 
stairs to find the streets shrouded in a heavy fog. We 
were supposed to be on our way to Des Moines and 
bought tickets for that point. There were twenty or 
more men on the platform of the little station. Most 
of them shook hands with Mr. Bryan before the train 
came in, a few minutes before one o'clock. 

The sleeping-car porter waked the members of Mr. 
Bryan's party soon after six o'clock that morning and 
they were in various stages of undress when the train 
arrived at Valley Junction, an indeterminate sort of 
little town five miles below Des Moines. Mr. Bryan 
had his face covered with lather, preparatory to shav- 
ing. Some of the other members of the party were just 
climbing sleepily out of their upper berths. Early as 
was the hour, two or three hundred people were at the 
station, and the Local Committee clamored for admis- 
sion. Bob Rose went out to the platform to explain. 



BRYAN 37 

" Mr. Bryan Is dressing and is sorry that he cannot 
come out and see you all," he said. 

"But he is scheduled to make a speech here. We 
have all come down to meet him. There is a big crowd 
up the street waiting," was the amazing reply. 

Neither Mr. Bryan nor any of his party had been 
notified of this engagement, but the Peerless Leader 
hastily washed the lather off his face, dressed and got 
off the train. The laggard members of his party fol- 
lowed him, collarless and in their shirt-sleeves, and 
completed their toilet on the station platform, in the 
presence of the amused and gaping crowd. The pro- 
cession started on foot up Main Street, headed by the 
Valley Junction Silver Cornet Band, consisting of two 
fifes and a drum. 

The first stop was at "Hy" Drexel's caf6 for break- 
fast. The doors were closed to all except the members 
of Mr. Bryan's party, while the populace pressed their 
noses to the pane at the front windows, watching the 
great man and his flying squadron eat an excellent 
breakfast of ham and eggs, lamb chops, and sliced 
oranges. The Peerless Leader consumed two cavern- 
ous bowls of milk toast. 

From this oasis the line of march led a block west 
and half a block north to a vacant lot adjoining the 
City Hall. The fire department occupied the ground 
floor of the municipal building, and on the side of it 
facing the vacant lot was painted an advertisement for 
a real Havana five-cent cigar. "Cap" de Ford intro- 



38 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

duced Mr. Bryan to the thousand or more people who 
crowded about the stand. While waiting for the " Cap" 
to conclude his introduction, one somehow found one- 
self feeling sorry for Mr. Bryan. One involuntarily 
recalled other days, and remembered other scenes ; of 
tired actors waiting in the old car shed at Atlanta, 
Georgia, for the early morning train to Birmingham. 
The whole present performance seemed so abnormal. 
The environment evidently depressed Mr. Bryan, too, 
for he preached to his audience, scarcely talking poli- 
tics at all. 

The crowd followed Mr. Bryan to the station, and 
some girls sang campaign songs until he got on the 
rear day coach of a local train to go to Perry, where he 
was scheduled to speak at noon. 

At every stop Mr. Bryan made a rear-platform 
speech to shouting, enthusiastic crowds of farmers, 
their wives and children. The rear coach became 
crowded to the point of suffocation. At every stop the 
passengers in the forward coaches who had not con- 
trived to squeeze into Mr. Bryan's coach got off the 
train and ran back to the tail end to hear the speeches. 
At the warning cry, "All aboard !" they would make a 
dash for the train. The man in charge of the baggage 
car came back to hear every speech between Valley 
Junction and Perry, running the entire length of the 
train twice each time. He must have done sixty-three 
miles before noon. 

In these rear-platform speeches Mr. Bryan freely 



BRYAN 39 

used Biblical quotations and allusions. Every time he 
made use of one the crowd shouted with enthusiastic 
approval. It is difficult to imagine a more effective 
oratorical style than Mr. Bryan employs in these 
speeches. It is intimate, easy, and colloquial, and 
makes instant appeal to his audiences. His sentences 
are short and ordinarily he employs words of not more 
than two syllables. He has acquired the rare art of 
condensation and can say a great deal in a brief space 
of time. He drives his point home. He understands his 
audiences from the ground up. Their mode of life and 
their thoughts are as familiar to him as his own. There 
can be no manner of doubt that he "gets next" to the 
people. 

All day long men came up to Mr. Bryan renewing old 
acquaintance, and the last thing one heard that night 
from an upper berth, as Mr. Bryan was crawling into 
a lower one, was a whiskered individual saying : "You 
know me, Mr. Bryan. I am old man Mullens' son — 
J, P. Mullens is my name. You remember when you 
was up to our town there was a big crowd of people in 
the street, and I stuck my head out of the window and 
yelled 'Hooray for Bryan' ; and you looked up at me 
and waved your hand. I'm that very fellow." 

Of course Mr. Bryan remembered him. He remem- 
bers all the various and sundry individuals that come 
to him with the same formula: "You remember me? 
I'm the man, — " 

Possibly the most illuminating incident of the whole 



40 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

day came near Tama. Mr. Bryan had gone forward 
into the washroom of the car to get the deferred shave 
of which he stood in need. He had just finished and 
was standing coatless and collarless, with a towel stuck 
in his neckband to protect his shirt-front, when the 
train stopped for a moment at a Httle station just 
outside of Tama. Mr. Bryan had not had time to wash 
the remaining flecks of lather from his face. The 
people outside were calling for him. A half-dozen men 
and some dear old ladies in sunbonnets were running 
alongside of the car calling up: "Is Mr. Bryan in 
there?" 

The Peerless Leader responded : "Yes, but I'm shav- 
ing and can't come out." 

"Well, stick your head out of the window and let us 
have a look at you, anyway." 

Mr. Bryan pulled the towel from his neckband and 
thrust his head and the upper part of his body out of 
the window, all in undress as he was, and grasped the 
hands that were reached up to him. 

Neither he nor the people outside seemed to think 
there was anything unusual in the performance. It was 
not undignified. It was just friendly and simple, and 
lacking in all pretense. Neither the men nor the women 
who wanted to shake hands with Mr. Bryan were 
"shocked" at seeing him without coat, waistcoat, or 
collar, and with face unwashed after shaving. 

Now that is the sort of a day that Mr. Bryan likes. 
He turned in as fresh as a daisy that night and beam- 



BRYAN 41 

ing with happiness. No concourse of ambassadors, 
however splendiferous, no Washington company?, how- 
ever brilliant, and no mere "desk job," however dis- 
tinguished, could compensate Mr. Bryan for continued 
absence from these beloved scenes. For his is the 
singing heart of the real troubadour. He cannot with- 
stand its calling, 

I recall and recapture another scene. 

When the Democrats sit formally at meat, they 
insist, quite in the old spacious way, on having their 
troubadours, minnesingers, and jongleurs about them. 
They love their sweet singers. They love the words and 
music. They set their course by sweet melody. They 
derive inspiration and moral sustenance from all their 
silver-tongued. 

After all, there is an ineradicable and fundamental 
difference between a Democrat and a Republican. It 
goes deeper than any difference over political and cam- 
paign issues. It is a difference of temperament, of 
habit, of thought, of attitude, and outlook on life. It 
is never so sharply and elderly revealed as at their con- 
ventions and their national committee meetings. 

The Democratic National Committee was called to 
meet at Washington to select a place of meeting for the 
national convention and, following the usual custom, 
gave a dinner in the evening, which the Democrats pre- 
fer to call a " banquet." It befell as ordered, but, in order 
to accommodate all of the multitude, melody-thirsty 
and music-loving, two dinners had to be held simulta- 



42 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

neously In two hotels, with a "staggered" list of twelve 
speakers. As soon as a speaker had finished at one 
banquet, he was hastened to the other to repeat his 
performance. Thus it came about that these devoted 
people sat under a steady deluge and torrent of oratory 
from eight o'clock in the evening until close on to three 
o'clock the following morning. During this whole time 
they sat under a roaring torrent and downpour of more 
or less incandescent words. And the incredible fact is 
to be recorded that they left refreshed and stimulated. 
All the famous troubadours of the party came from 
far and near. Of these Mr. Bryan is easily the chief. 
Like that other great singer who preceded him in the 
golden age of the troubadours, Raimbaut d'Aurenga, 
he could describe himself as "young-hearted, fresh, 
and in perfect health" ; and I for one found him hard 
to resist when he bade the jongleurs strike up a lively 
air and began his latest song : 

With wits refreshed and fresh desire, 
With knowledge fresh and freshened fire, 
In fine fresh style, that ne'er will tire, 
A good fresh poem I'll begin; 
My fresh new verses will inspire 
Fresh life in every knight and squire, 
And freshen pulses old and thin! 

As he stood there in the eddying tobacco smoke, fac- 
ing a none too friendly crowd, I, his detached and long- 
time chronicler, knew that he meant to fare forth again 
among the constituencies and hoped that again I might 
be with him. Like Coeur de Lion, he is a bom traveler. 



BRYAN 43 

He finds refreshment and uplift in wayfaring along the 
open road ; in the roar and bustle of arrival and depar- 
ture at small towns where his coming and going is an 
event ; the applause of friendly audiences, and the 
freedom from restraint. 

The world, as is well known, goes round and round, 
and thus it comes about that all sorts of things recur. 
The Marquis Albert of Malaspina, back in the golden 
ages, publicly taunted the great Raimbaut : "Tell me, 
Raimbaut, if it please you : Is it a fact that the lady 
you have been singing so much to has jilted you, 
as people say?" And Raimbaut was able to sing: 
"Though love desert me, I will achieve all the good I 
can ; though I lose my lady, I will not lose my fame and 
talent" ; and he sang again of his future and the battles 
to come : 

In heat and cold, to come and go, 
To trot and gallop, run and leap, 
To toil and suffer, scarce to sleep, — • 
This is the life I'm now to know; 
My inn the roadside or the grove at best. 
With iron and steel and ashen spear oppressed, 
With stern sirvente instead of love and song, 
The weak will I defend against the strong. 

His voice was as limpid and as melodic as ever. He 
had had a hair-cut before dinner and his locks no longer 
curled upward at the ends. It made him look younger. 
He made the "parade" of candidates look thin and 
unreal. He dominated the whole gathering of the 
Democrats, 



44 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

Now who do you suppose said this about our hero ? 
"Not only have Mr. Bryan's character, his justice, his 
sincerity, his transparent integrity, his Christian prin- 
ciple, made a deep impression upon all with whom he 
has dealt ; but his tact in dealing with men of many 
sorts, his capacity for business, his mastery of the 
principle of each matter he has been called upon to 
deal with, have cleared away many a difficulty.. . .1 
cannot say what pleasure and profit I, myself, have 
taken from close association with Mr. Bryan or how 
thoroughly he has seemed to all of us who are associ- 
ated with him here to deserve not only our confidence, 
but our affectionate admiration." 

That was the testimony of Mr. Woodrow Wilson, 
who did not bestow his commendation lightly. No 
more reserved, no more cautious, no more reticent, no 
man with so much of the Scotch quality of canniness, 
has lived in the White House in the lifetime of this 
generation. 

So far as is ascertainable to the lay student of Mr. 
Wilson's mental reaches and their tributaries, bayous, 
and lagoons, he never changed his mind about any- 
thing, except the initiative and referendum and Wil- 
liam J. Bryan, since he became a grown man and 
began to have matured convictions and opinions. He 
became a convert to both these great natural forces in 
political life after coming into contact with their work- 
ings. He discovered the virtues of the initiative and 
referendum when he went out into the Northwest and 



BRYAN 45 

visited Oregon- and Washington. Mr. Bryan was rather 
wished on Mr. Wilson by the severe and inexorable 
logic of the political situation growing out of the Balti- 
more convention. After Mr. Wilson was elected there 
was nothing for it but to make Mr. Bryan Secretary 
of State. 

Mr. Bryan's competency, his ability, his conduct as 
the head of our Department of Foreign Affairs, his 
appointments to the diplomatic corps and his efficiency 
as an administrator of departmental business and 
routine, are not under scrutiny here. Being Secretary 
of State was in the beginning the smallest part of Mr. 
Bryan's business and the least important aspect of his 
value to the Wilson administration. He will not rank 
with Madison, Monroe, Daniel Webster, John Hay, or 
Elihu Root as a Secretary of State. His dispatches will 
not be used in after years as models for aspiring young 
diplomatists. But his usefulness was in no way abated 
by his failure to rise to the heights of some of his 
famous predecessors in the Department of State. Mr. 
Bryan was indispensable to Mr. Wilson in the making 
of the Tariff Bill and the Currency Bill. Everybody 
remarked about the Currency Bill that the wonder 
was, not that so much that was good was put into it, 
but that so much that was bad was kept out of it. 
Much of the keeping out was Mr. Bryan's work. 

Mr. Bryan subdued the heathen that imagine vain 
things. And he did it all quietly and without seeking to 
make himself appear a moving factor in the situation. 



46 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

As persons know who were in Washington through the 
first summer of the Wilson regime, when the Tariff Bill 
and the Currency Bill were in the making, Mr. Bryan's 
ante-room was crowded day by day with members and 
with others from the hinterland, eager for a sign. They 
wanted Mr. Bryan to give the bills his blessing. They 
wanted to know about this and that provision. Mr. 
Bryan talked with all of them and told them what they 
came to find out. They could not all see Mr. Wilson, 
and most of them would have been extremely uncom- 
fortable in his presence, but they felt they knew Bryan. 
He belonged to their tribe and talked their language. 
They had been to the wars together before. 

Washington, for the most part, wholly misappre- 
hended Mr. Bryan. It regarded him solely as Secretary 
of State and applied to him the standards of conduct 
and deportment that have come to be regarded as 
standards of that offtce. Social Washington and much 
of political Washington did not know of Mr. Bryan's 
activities outside of the State Department. They heard 
of his simple friendliness and the informality of his dis- 
course with diplomats, and, having artificial standards 
and perhaps in many instances false standards, they 
were made ashamed. I found that the sneers at Mr. 
Bryan were by no means reflected by the understanding 
members of the diplomatic corps stationed here. Some 
of the ambassadors rather went out of the way to ex- 
press their admiration of Mr. Bryan's simplicity, of his 
absolute candor, of the sincerity he showed in official 



BRYAN 47 

intercourse. They saw that he was a dreamer, an 
idealist ; that his heart runs away with his head ; that 
he was lacking in guile ; that he spoke to them truth- 
fully ; and these qualities they appreciated because 
they are so rare in their experience with more sophisti- 
cated foreign ofhces. 

Mr. Bryan came to the office too late in life to ac- 
quire reputation as a great Department chief, as an 
administrator and an executive. He depended too 
much on inspiration. He saw too many people to allow 
him the proper time to attend to the details of his office. 
Prior to being Secretary of State he had never had any 
executive experience. Every office of foreign affairs 
is a hive of concrete details, of precedents. Almost 
every case that comes up has a history. Present deci- 
sions are influenced and limited and to a degree deter- 
mined by a policy laid down by some other Secretary 
of State who may have been dead a quarter of a cen- 
tury. Mr. Bryan did not withhold the time to himself 
to withdraw from the daily hurly-burly and coolly 
review and master the essentials of important prob- 
lems that confronted his Department. It is revealing 
no secret to say that President Wilson did that for him. 

Mr. Bryan winced and became restive under the 
criticism he received. Some of it cut him to the quick. 
The continued charges that he was unable to compre- 
hend the business of the State Department, that he 
did not know what was going on under his nose, that 
he did not read the dispatches, and that, reading them, 



48 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

he could not understand them, particularl^r hurt Mr. 
Bryan. He resented this criticism far more than the 
popular disapproval that was visited upon his diplo- 
matic appointments. On the face of it, it seems proba- 
ble that Mr. Wilson knew of Mr. Bryan's state of mind 
and sought to alleviate his mortification when he wrote 
a letter giving specific commendation to Mr. Bryan's 
capacity for business, he having "given to the policy 
of the State Department a definiteness and dignity 
that are very admirable." This was by no means the 
Washington verdict on Mr. Bryan's first year in office, 
but it was Mr. Wilson's, and there was no occasion 
for him to say it unless he chose to say it. 

Anyhow, Mr. Bryan was as useful and effective as 
any Secretary of State that Mr. Wilson had during his 
eight years. That, I concede, is not saying much. In 
ofhce Mr. Bryan is a caged bird and can't sing. And 
he must sing. For he is a true troubadour and not a 
double-entry bookkeeper. 



JOHNSON: A HERALD WITH TRUMPET 

In our time there have been just three national politi- 
cal leaders ; true, natural leaders not dependent upon 
organizations or the political situation, or (as they are 
called), issues ; who made their own issues as the season 
and the opportunity offered. I mean men with national 
personal followings. Men who could command an 
appreciable number of votes on any national question 
on whatever side they chose to take. 

You can have no doubt about their identity: Wil- 
liam J. Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson. 
Can you think of another since Grover Cleveland, and, 
before Cleveland, Abraham Lincoln? Would you in- 
clude Ulysses S. Grant ? I would not. 

Indeed, I suspect there are those who are doubtful 
about the rightful inclusion of Mr. Wilson. He came to 
his authority and leadership in the presidency. It was 
not a natural growth. Being In the White House was a 
tremendous accessory to the fact. But he must be in- 
cluded by courtesy if not by right. Roosevelt was 
helped, too, by being President, but not enough to 
impair the validity of his natural leadership, and he did 
not lose his personal following when he lost office. 
There can be no manner of doubt about Bryan. The 
"Bryan vote" from 1896 to 191 2 was as solid, as 
patent, as obvious, as overwhelming a factor in politics 



50 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

as existed in this land. It had to be reckoned with and 
taken into account. 

Now, Hiram Johnson bids fair to join the ranks of 
these three and become a recognized national poHtical 
leader with a clearly defined personal following. The 
Johnson vote is smaller and less compact and less a 
factor, but it exists, though to a degree formless and 
still in the making. Both Johnson and Bryan derive 
whatever power and authority they possess directly 
from the electors without the aid of any intermediaries 
or organization. Their foUowings are a natural growth, 
first acquired and then cultivated. They have gone 
directly to first sources for their warrant of authority. 
They have each sought to be President, and, while 
their method of approach has been the same and 
placed on the same general plan of direct appeal, their 
execution and technique have been wholly unlike. 

If Mr. Bryan is a troubadour and a silver tongue, 
Mr. Johnson is a herald with a trumpet. He is mili- 
tant. He summons to arms. He blows a blast outside 
the walls of Jericho, and if the walls do not fall he uses 
a battering-ram. Like any knight errant he is always 
ready to tilt a joust against any one who does not mea- 
sure up to his ideas of a champion of the public weal. 

Hiram Johnson is a bold, forthright questing man. 
He wants to be President of the United States. He 
believes he has the courage, the intelligence, the ex- 
perience, the qualities of mind and character — the 
general fitness to be the Chief Executive of this nation. 




Coi'ijriyhl h,i II, ui ,- V I 



SENATOR HIRAM W. JOHNSON 



JOHNSON 51 

His problem Is to find out how many of us agree with 
him. He offered himself for the nomination in 1920 
and failed. 

Being nominated for President and being elected 
President are two totally different processes. The 
nomination is controlled In great degree by the party 
organization. The election is decided by popular vote. 
To be nominated a candidate must have an organiza- 
tion of his own and plenty of money to spend. Dele- 
gate-hunting as practiced among us is the most costly 
of all outdoor sports. 

The presidential primaries In some of the States 
have made possible such lone-hand candidacies as 
Hiram Johnson's. State primary laws made possible 
his two elections as Governor and his choice as Senator 
from California. These same laws make possible for 
him another trial for the presidency. The campaign 
of 1920 was Johnson's first defeat at the head of a 
ticket. My own guess Is that he will not accept that 
verdict as final. 

Now what sort of a man is this Hiram Warren John- 
son? Let's walk up close and look at him. I went to 
California on this quest. I sought the verdict of the 
vicinage. If the people of his native State were not 
for him, I knew he had no chance of Impressing him- 
self on the nation. It may be said at once that Cali- 
fornia supports Johnson. The State believes in him. 

In my innocence I thought it would be a simple 
thing to draw a picture of Hiram Johnson. Here, one 



52 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

said to oneself, is a big, breezy, colorful, picturesque 
personality against a Western background. He must 
figure in scores of good anecdotes. It will be as easy to 
write about him as it would be about T. R. All one has 
to do is to go out and get it. Even arriving at Sacra- 
mento on a rainy Sunday did not blur these bright 
imaginings. Then to the telephone only to discover 
that Johnson was in San Francisco. Oh, well, it is a 
rainy day and we will make a start bright and early 
Monday morning. 

Monday morning. Now for the flying start. We are 
in the back room of Colonel Snook's real estate ofifice. 
The doors are closed, but not before the Colonel had 
told the boy outside to "tell 'em all I'm out." Business 
of lighting cigars and settling down for a closed session. 
"Now, tell me all about Johnson. What sort of a fel- 
low he is. Everything you know about him." 

The Colonel and Johnson went to school together. 
They have been close friends ever since they were 
seven or eight years old. But Colonel Snook was 
Number One on the list of inarticulate emotionalists 
belonging to the great Johnson-I-Knew-Him-When 
Club in California. He got under way slowly. 

"Well," he said, "Johnson is certainly the best two- 
fisted fighting man I ever knew. He is a real scrapper. 
He certainly has run true to form. There is a man who 
won't look for trouble, but who never dodges it. But 
you ought to talk to a friend of his down in San Fran- 
cisco. He is a lawyer down there. I'll give you his 



JOHNSON 53 

name. He knows a lot about Johnson. Or you ought 
to go over to the City Library and talk to Ripley, who 
was in school with the Governor and who ought to 
have some good stories. Come back and see me again. 
Maybe I'll think of something." 

And now to the Library to see Mr. Ripley : "Yes, I 
have known the Governor ever since he was a boy. 
He used to live in the house right across the street 
there. He certainly is a fighter. I do not mean that he 
is a bully or seeks trouble, but he was always wiUing to 
fight. He is just the same as a man that he was as a 
boy." 

"Yes," one added persuasively ; "you must know a 
lot of good stories about him. Tell them to me." 

"I think you had better go over to the 'Bee' office 
and talk with the editor. He ought to be able to tell 
you lots of things that would be interesting." 

Three blocks down the main street, two blocks to 
the right, up the stairs, and one finds the young lady 
at the switchboard in the Sacramento "Bee" office. 
"Is the editor in?" one asked in the Eastern voice. 
"Do you mean C. K. ?" said the damsel brightly. 
"I think he's at home. I will ring him up and see." 
She punched at the switchboard, as they do, and 
presently asked: "Is C. K. there?" He was, but be- 
fore one went out to see him one ventured to ask: 
"Why do you call him C. K. ?" 

"Because that is his name," she said ; but the ques- 
tion puzzled her. 



54 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

C. K. began : "He certainly is a good fighting man. 
Johnson never was afraid of a scrap." 

"How about a good anecdote or two?" 

"Well, have you seen Colonel Snook or Ripley over 
at the Library?" 

The circle was complete. It was time for lunch. One 
had received the fixed impression that Johnson was a 
fighter. Conceive this process repeated again and 
again, until one of Johnson's bitterest opponents gave 
the sough t-f or clue. The query was put this way : 
"What about Johnson? He seems to be able to put 
over almost anything in this State. How does he get 
away with it?" 

"Well, I will tell you. He certainly Is one of the best 
fight-" 

"Yes, yes," one Interrupted, "that Is established. 
But Isn't there anything else to him ?" 

"Well" — slowly — "when he says he Is going to do 
a thing he does It. When he starts out on anything he 
never lets go until he carries It through. When he 
makes a promise he keeps it. He has kept every 
promise he has made to the people of this State. He 
has done everything that he told them he would do, 
and now they trust him and believe In him absolutely." 

That gave me a basis, so I went to the Senator from 
California to find out what he thought about himself. 

He has a square jaw and a clear, gray eye. It is full 
of light and fire and vigor. His hair, too. Is gray, and 
he has plenty of It. It Is stiff and short and always 



JOHNSON 55 

stays parted. There is nothing breezy, colorful, or 
picturesque about him ; nothing high, wide, and care- 
less. He is just serious and purposeful. 

Johnson told me at once : " If you are going to write 
about me, you won't have to go back of 1910. Before 
that time I was either in school or wearing a path be- 
tween my house and my office. I spent my days at my 
desk or in the courts, and when I got through work in 
the afternoon I went home and stayed until it was 
time to go to work again next morning. The years 
since 1910 are all of my life. My real life began when 
I was given an opportunity to quit working for myself 
and begin working for the people of the State." 

But before I get down to the business of disclosing 
the basis on which Johnson has erected himself and 
become in turn Governor, United States Senator, and 
presidential possibility, I must tell the one Hiram 
Johnson anecdote in existence. For I found it at last. 
I pass it on as I received it. Whether it is told by the 
oldest inhabitant or the youngest reporter I cannot 
determine. The narrative styles of the two are so alike. 
But I found it in the Sacramento "Bee" of Novem- 
ber 7, 1916. Here it is: 

"Do you remember the time when General Grant 
visited Sacramento on his return from a trip around 
the world and was given a great ovation in front of the 
State Capitol?" 

"The address of welcome was delivered by Henry 
Edgerton, the grandest orator of his day, whose elo- 



56 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

quent recital of the General's life calls to mind the 
subsequent but no more magnificent epitome of the 
career of Napoleon by Robert IngersoU. 

"Grant and W. H. Mills visited school, and the 
teachers were in a quandary about a proper welcome. 

"All but one threw up their hands in despair, de- 
claring they had no pupil prepared for such an emer- 
gency. That one was Miss Jessie McMenomy, of the 
Sacramento Grammar School, now Mrs. N. E. White. 

"*I have a lad in my class,* said she, 'who can al- 
ways be depended on to meet an emergency. Hiram 
Johnson is not afraid to face the great man.' 

**And do you remember how the world's great mili- 
tary chieftain — stolid though his nature — displayed 
much difficulty in suppressing his emotion during 
young Hiram's spirited recital of 'Sheridan's Ride,' 
and how his voice trembled as he openly complimented 
the lad on his forensic ability ? 

"'Hiram,' said his teacher as the former returned to 
his seat, * I prophesy there are many here to-day who 
will yet see you standing in General Grant's shoes.' 

"And that prophecy bids fair to be realized." 

Read it over again. It is a perfect model. It rigidly 
conforms to every convention. I cannot for a moment 
accept Senator Johnson's disclaimer that it is not true ; 
that he never made a speech to General Grant. Be- 
sides, he is the only person I could find in Sacramento 
who didn't believe the story, and if it is not true it 
ought to be. 



JOHNSON 57 

Johnson is bursting with energy and vitality ; he is 
always under high pressure ; he is dominant, masterful, 
impatient of restraint, demandful for what he believes 
to be right ; "a born leader," as the dear old phrase has 
it. He is pugnacious, always a fighter, and incapable 
of using "moral suasion." Finally, he is as independ- 
ent as a wood sawyer's clerk. As might be expected 
with these qualities, he is a good hater. You are either 
his friend or his enemy. There is no middle ground. 
The people of California, among whom he has lived all 
his life, either praise him to the skies or denounce him 
in terms that if printed would scorch the begc^ias. 

Hiram Johnson is a Native Son. He was born at 
Sacramento, September 2, 1866, and educated in the 
public schools there. He was twelve years old when he 
told General Grant how Sheridan saved the day by 
coming up from Winchester twenty miles away, and he 
was seventeen years old when he was graduated from 
the Sacramento High School. He learned shorthand 
and spent a year in his father's law ofifice as a ste- 
nographer. At eighteen he entered the University of 
California in the Class of '88, but left in the middle of 
his junior year to marry. He was then just twenty 
years old. 

From the time he was married until he was thirty-six 
years old Johnson practiced law in Sacramento with 
his father and his brother Albert. He was interested in 
politics and for a time was city attorney. In the hope 
of increasing his practice and his income, Johnson 



58 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

removed to San Francisco in 1902 with his brother. 
They soon dissolved partnership and Hiram went it 
alone. He seems to get on better that way. He estab- 
lished a successful practice in San Francisco. He was 
called one of the best jury lawyers on the Pacific Coast. 

Johnson has one outstanding endearing quality. He 
doesn't value money. "Why, if we didn't watch him," 
one of his associates told me, "he would start East with 
only six dollars in his pocket." Simply he looks upon 
money as a medium of exchange, and not as something 
to be hoarded and sweated over. His personal habits 
are of the simplest. He spends his evenings at home or 
at the movie shows. He is perhaps the most inveterate 
movie fan in the country to-day. He knows the names 
of all the movie actors and actresses, and can tell you 
what parts they have played. 

He told me that he started going to the movies as a 
refuge. The picture theaters being dark, he could 
spend an hour or two without being seen and pestered. 
They offered a means of escape from importunities. 
But now he goes to them because he likes them. Also, 
he is a domino-player of renown — "the best domino- 
player in the world," a Sacramento friend told me 
gravely, 

Johnson was not associated with the beginning of the 
reform movement in California. He was practicing 
law in San Francisco when it began. Prior to 1910 
California was in an evil plight — machine-ridden. 
The fight to free the State began with a group of men 



JOHNSON 59 

in municipal elections in the south. The first real 
advance was made when a direct primary law was 
passed. This gave the little group of men who had 
organized to lift California out of the mire their oppor- 
tunity. They cast about for a fighter to lead their 
cause. They wanted a man of fire, of energy, with 
clean hands, and free from entangling alliances, who 
could make an appeal direct to the people. They de- 
cided that Johnson was such a man. The moral im- 
pulse in his character had led him to take a vigorous 
interest in public affairs. He was a man who took fire 
at an idea. He had made himself known all over the 
State by his participation in the graft cases. He was 
sought out and solicited to run as Republican candi- 
date for Governor at the August, 1910, primaries. The 
so-called Lincoln- Roosevelt Republican League was 
organized to endorse his candidacy. After some hesi- 
tation, Johnson accepted. That was his start. Since 
that he has been twice elected Governor and once 
United States Senator, each time by largely increased 
pluralities, and has been a candidate for Vice-President 
of the United States, and finally a strong contender for 
nomination for the presidency. Certainly an astonish- 
ing eleven-year record. 

Now you know as much about him as I do. He is a 
man of quick sympathies and sensitive to praise or 
blame. Politicians should have thick hides to be at 
ease. Johnson is not pachydermatous. He is sensitive, 
he is modest, and he is diffident. He can be quickly 



60 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

inflamed. He is just fifty-five years old now and in the 
prime of his vigor. What he will make of himself in 
the coming ten years is one of the interesting specula- 
tions in our national politics. 

I don't think he will ever settle down to a routine. 
Not, at any rate, while his emotions are so quickly 
alive and he is so ready to throw himself into any fray 
where the issue appeals to his sense of justice. He is 
not a canny or a cautious or a moderate man. And 
looking, I suspect, is the thing he would think least 
about before leaping. 

Whether he can find a national market for his politi- 
cal product, I don't know. Colonel Roosevelt, who was 
one of the shrewdest politicians, sensed this defect and 
touched upon it lightly in a letter he wrote in 1916. 
He said: "I genuinely believe that if the East could 
understand Johnson, we could get the Republicans to 
nominate him; but, good Lord, we are a parochial 
people, and it is the hardest thing in the world to get 
the people of one section, whether it is the Mississippi 
Valley or the Rocky Mountains States or the Middle 
West or the East, really to understand what another 
section such as the Coast is doing. Indeed, it is not too 
easy to get Oregon and Washington to understand 
what California is doing." 

If Johnson can Impress himself upon the East as he 
has upon California the rest will be easy, but until he 
does — 



LOST IN THE MISTS 

Conceive, if you will, the Honorable Bourke Cockran, 
freshly come again to the House after a long absence, 
rising in his place on a hot summer afternoon and 
making sonorous lamentation : 

"How many of the members around me now are 
known to the country at large ? I repeat this question 
with mournful realization that the answer cannot 
inspire us with pride in the situation." 

The experienced old silver-tongue with a sure in- 
stinct had hit upon the one topic that members of 
Congress never tire of talking about. They listened 
while he recited the story of their wrongs. Let us, too, 
draw near the lodge of sorrow and hear him booming 
his doleful cadences : 

"When I came to this House in the Fiftieth Congress 
reports and descriptions of our proceedings occupied 
the front page of every newspaper in America. When I 
returned to the Fifty-Eighth Congress, after an ab- 
sence of eight years, I found that the space allotted to 
us in the newspapers had shrunk to about a column. 
I return now, after an absence of twelve years, and 
find we have no place at all. Accounts of our proceed- 
ings are not accorded in the newspapers to-day as 
much space as a ball given by a fashionable woman. 

"Recall to mind the names of a few among the 



62 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

men who were conspicuous in the Fiftieth Congress, 
and who would not, I beUeve, have exchanged their 
prominence here for any other place in the whole 
world ? — John G. Carlisle, Roger Q. Mills, the two 
Breckinrldges, William L. Wilson, Benton McMillan, 
on this side. On that side, Thomas B. Reed. I may 
mention also William McKinley. And I could run 
through a long list of names famous in our history. 

"Why has this House shrunk so low in public 
esteem ? Why are our proceedings no longer important 
enough to obtain even mention in the newspapers? 
Why are gentlemen, as soon as they reach a conspicu- 
ous place here, ready to give up that which formerly 
was the dearest aspiration of genius and patriotism 
in order to seek elsewhere success which they consider 
more valuable and more creditable? 

"It was upon this floor and in this House that the 
reputations were established of the greatest political 
leaders in our history. Not one was ever established 
in the Senate. Not in the Senate, but in the House, 
did Henry Clay win the renown upon which his au- 
thority rested. Here also did James G. Blaine acquire 
the popularity which made mention of his name in any 
Republican gathering an occasion for demonstration 
of affection that was absolutely rapturous. 

"Neither Blaine nor Clay ever succeeded in reach- 
ing the Presidency, but they remained, while they 
lived, the idols, objects of adoration to their respective 
parties, embracing nearly one half of the people. I 



LOST IN THE MISTS 63 

myself saw and heard William J. Bryan emerge by a 
single speech on the floor from the position of a new 
and unknown member to a degree of prominence which 
led to his nomination three times for the Presidency 
and to the domination of his party for twenty years. 

"WTiy are no successors to these giants produced by 
our proceedings now? What is it that has atrophied 
this House — reduced it to such sterility ? I have 
heard it said that the reason for this decline of the 
House in importance is a decline in the ability of its 
members. Nothing, in my judgment, could be further 
from the truth. I have known the House for thirty- 
four years, and now on my return, after an absence of 
twelve years, I have been profoundly impressed and 
immensely cheered by the high order of ability dis- 
played in debate on this floor. 

"The Senate has become all-powerful. The House 
has declined till it is a negligible quantity. Is this an 
exaggeration ? What effect have you on public opinion 
to-day? These speeches which are of the highest ex- 
cellence — which in other days would have been 
widely read — are nowhere reported. Not even the 
fact that they were delivered is mentioned in the news- 
paper press. 

"And why should it be otherwise under existing 
conditions — conditions of your own creation — for 
which you yourselves are responsible ? By rules and 
by procedure which you have sanctioned you have re- 
nounced and thrown away the power which the Con- 



64 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

stitution conferred upon you and upon which your 
consequence depended." 

And so on and so on and so on. Ever since I have 
known the House, it has been asking, why aren't we 
known, why aren't our speeches printed, why can't we 
be great men, too, like the giants of other days ? And 
every so often the project revives for a Government 
newspaper that will print the speeches and debates, 
but nothing comes of it. Ten days after Bourke Cock- 
ran's speech, Albert Johnson, of Washington, who used 
to be a reporter, recurred to the subject and suggested 
that many an American schoolboy, if asked to define 
the function of the Roman Senate, would be tempted 
to reply that the institution existed for the purpose of 
listening to the speeches of Cicero. "Perhaps," he 
added, "that is what Cicero himself thought." Mr. 
Johnson thought the House was a more efficient legis- 
lative body because by shutting off the stream of talk 
the members have been able to perform their proper 
functions as a great governing body. He conceded that 
the orators enjoyed the mellifluous sound of their own 
voices, but said bluntly enough that they were no help 
to business. 

Whatever the cause. It remains true enough that 
few men in the House enjoy a national reputation, and 
that a man can be a member of Congress for years and 
years, attending faithfully to his business, and never 
become known outside of his district, or, at most, his 
State. They all may have been useful, effective mem- 



i 



LOST IN THE MISTS 65 

bers of the House, each In his own way, without ever 
having acquired fame or a wide reputation. 

Fifty-six members of the present House have served 
from seven to twenty-three two-year terms ; that is, 
from fourteen to forty-six years. They have been 
continuously under pubHc scrutiny and observation. 
How many of them do you know ? How many of them 
can you even name ? The House is a great bulk of 
unknown figures. 

In every country in the world — except ours — 
where parliamentary government is enjoyed, the war 
has brought to the fore in the popular assemblies new 
men, new figures, new political elements, new groups 
representing new ideas, while we alone have reached 
back to the old standpat days — what the politicians 
now think of as the Dark Ages of our domestic con- 
cerns — and resuscitated a group of conservative 
veterans. They represent, even in the estimation of 
their own colleagues and party, an ancient order of 
things. 

I stress their present eminence because this new 
country presents at this moment parliamentary leaders 
so different from the men who will frame legislation in 
the old countries. In common with other democracies 
we have a strong liking for the rule of seniority and 
order of precedence. There Is nothing I can say In its 
favor. It is responsible for the present organization In 
the House. It is responsible for the lack of new figures 
and new blood at the top. It enables a cJuU and medio- 



66 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

ere Congressman, coming from a "safe district," to 
remain in Washington year after year, to rise by in- 
evitable processes to a place of power and authority 
and command. It made Mr. Claude Kitchin, of Scot- 
land Neck, North Carolina, Chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Ways and Means, just as, in due course, it 
has made Mr. Fordney, of Michigan, his successor. 

Even Mr. Gillett, of Massachusetts, the Speaker, 
who came to the chair following a protest and insur- 
rection on the part of the Republicans in the House 
against naming Mr. Mann for that honor, could not 
be called radical or restless or be accused of deeply 
yearning for a new order by even the most vivid 
imagination. An upright and able man, a politician 
against whom no charge of lack of interest in his 
country's welfare can be brought, he is of the eminently 
conservative and safe and sane type. He never shared 
or participated or aligned himself in sympathy or in 
action with the "insurgent group" in the Republican 
Party that first dethroned Cannon, the Speaker, in the 
House and at the same time pruned the speakership of 
its powers, nor was he in open sympathy or alliance 
with the little group of five so-called "progressive" 
Senators who protested so courageously and with such 
political effect against the Payne-Aldrich tariff bill. 
Through all the years, Mr. Gillett has been a regular 
Republican. 

The blessed rule of seniority is responsible for the 
eminence of the present House leaders. There is noth- 



LOST IN THE MISTS 67 

Ing to be said in Its favor. The House of Representa- 
tives does its business through committees. Members 
of the House attain rank and power and influence and 
position in the organization of that body through the 
character of their committee assignments. What may- 
be called the "good" or important committees are 
those of Ways and Means, which frames tariff bills and 
other revenue measures ; Appropriations, which has to 
do with disbursements of public moneys from the 
Treasury ; Military Affairs, Naval Affairs, Judiciary, 
Agriculture, Post-Office and Post- Roads, Public Build- 
ings and Grounds, Rivers and Harbors, and Interstate 
and Foreign Commerce. To come to occupy a ranking 
and powerful position, to become chairman of one of 
these committees, a member of the House has so to 
contrive his affairs at home in his own district that he 
remains continuously in Congress. 

Mr. Gillett, Speaker, has been in Congress thirteen 
continuous terms. The revolt that made him Speaker 
was, therefore, not a violent break with tradition. 
Mr. Mann has been in the House eleven continuous 
terms. Mr. Mondell has also been a member for eleven 
terms, but not continuously, as he was not a member 
of the Fifty-Fifth Congress. Joseph W. Fordney, of 
Michigan, now Chairman of the Ways and Means 
Committee, has been In Congress for ten continuous 
terms. Philip Pitt Campbell, of Kansas, who is Chair- 
man of the Rules Committee, has been in the House 
eight continuous terms. 



68 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

The point I am making Is that while under the 
present system the political color of the House may 
change from time to time, the quality of Its dominant 
personnel is not greatly disturbed or altered. Before 
each Congressional election it is fairly well known who 
will occupy the chief positions In the House organiza- 
tion if the Democrats win and who will be the "lead- 
ers" If the Republicans are successful. That condition 
may have something to do with the present estate of 
the so-called popular branch. Really able and force- 
ful and vigorous men are not willing to serve in the 
ruck for a long period of years before breaking through 
the thick crust of seniority. The country outside the 
House ofifers too many opportunities for advancement 
and preferment for a man of action and ability. Men 
of energy and substance do not want to stand in a long 
queue waiting for the gates of opportunity to open 
when other chances are immediately open to them 
elsewhere. 

The House ought to command the best ability In this 
country, but notoriously It does not. There are able 
men in the House among Its unknowns, and they will 
wait a long time before they become known. Long 
waiting too often dulls the edge of ambition. Men 
come to the House keen and alert and eager who after 
twenty years' service find themselves much like their 
fellows. They conform to the traditions, the practice 
and the spirit of the House. 

And yet, after all, the House of Representatives is 



LOST IN THE MISTS 69 

representative. It keeps pace with the country. Its 
average of intelligence is the average of intelligence 
over our continent. We make it just what it is. Every 
two years we have a chance to throw out every man in 
it and put in new blood. If the people in Mr. Cannon's 
district and Mr. Fordney's and Mr. Mondell's and Mr. 
Garner's and Mr. Campbell's want these gentlemen to 
represent them term after term, they have a perfect 
right to choose them. But the result of this seniority 
bloc is that the House has small allure for eager, ambi- 
tious men. If such men come to the House, they are 
willing to leave it when opportunity offers. John J. 
Fitzgerald, of New York, after rising high on the 
Democratic side, and after long service, left of his own 
accord. James W. Good, Chairman of the Committee 
on Appropriations, has just done the same thing. Of 
course, any of them would leave to go to the Senate. 
This aspect of Washington, this balance of profit and 
loss, was often in the thoughts of Henry Adams. He 
relates that he and John Hay and Clarence King often 
discussed the question: "Hay had a simple faculty 
for remembering faces, and would break off suddenly 
the thread of his talk, as he looked out of the window 
on Lafayette Square, to notice an old corps commander 
or admiral of the Civil War tottering along to his club 
for his cards or his cocktail. . .or what drew Adams's 
close attention: 'There goes old Boutwell gamboling 
like the gamboling kid.' There they went ! Men who 
had swayed the course of empire as well as the course 



70 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

of Hay, King, and Adams, less valued than the 
ephemeral Congressman behind them, who could not 
have told whether the general was a Boutwell or Bout- 
well a general. Theirs was the highest known success, 
and one asked what it was worth to them. Apart 
from personal vanity, what would they sell it for?" 

Washington is full of ghosts ; the men who were. 

The game of politics, like the game of chess, while 
intricate and susceptible of many variations, is gov- 
erned by fixed and ancient rules and conventions. A 
Persian chess master having no language but his own, 
and no contact or acquaintance or understanding or 
even faint knowledge of the Western world, could yet 
come to Washington, Georgia, and there in the shade 
and repose and peace of that fine old town meet and 
play the local expert in the perfect ease and security of 
any meeting on a thoroughly known ground. With the 
chessmen arranged between them, the players would 
know without a spoken word or any other channel of 
communication what to do next. They would be on 
familiar ground. They would know the moves. They 
would have a broad field of contact. The Georgia vil- 
lager might soon find himself in closer mental com- 
munion with the Persian than with any of his neigh- 
bors. 

Politicians among us are set apart like that. Many 
of them — a great many too many of them — follow 
the game for a livelihood. They become professionals 
in their engrossing vocation. Politics is the only game 



LOST IN THE MISTS 71 

that has no penalties of suspension or disbarment for 
fouls and unfair practices. There are no rules against 
gouging and biting and scratching and hitting below 
the belt. Men seek to rise to attain temporary ag- 
grandizement and office, to overcome their opponents 
by any guile or subterfuge. In their old age they are 
embittered and their lives are ashes in their mouths. 
Their days of activity are spent in the vain pursuit of 
illusions and not in solid achievement. In the end they 
are "lame ducks" who must be "taken care of," or, if 
they fall out of the game inopportunely when their old 
cronies and associates are not in power, they go back 
where they came from and "resume the practice of 
law." 

Their daily life is one of appalling transitions. One 
day it takes three or four messengers to conduct them 
in proper state from the entrance of their offices to 
their desks and relieve them of hat and coat. To see 
the great man appointments have to be made well in 
advance through a reluctant secretary, and the time 
of audience is restricted. It may be that the next time 
you see him, he will be hanging precariously on the 
rear platform of a street-car and, oh ! so eager to talk 
about anything and as long as you like. The heavy 
curse that hangs over the "ins" is that sooner or later 
they will be "outs," and the one hope that sustains the 
"outs," and prevents them from giving away to de- 
spair and going to work to earn a living, is that pres- 
ently a turn of the wheel will bring them "in," 



72 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

Being what they are, and permeated with the in- 
stinct for their guild, the poHticians resent the intru- 
sion of amateurs and persons with new ideas and new 
plans, or who do not know the old conventions. They 
hate anything new like the very devil. They cannot 
cope with it. They have no apparatus or formula to 
apply to new problems or new approaches. They like 
established and familiar issues. They like to deal with 
other professionals. 

' Too many good men and able have heeded Plutarch's 
advice. He said : Abstain from beans ; that is, keep 
out of public offices, for anciently the choice of the 
officers of state was made by beans. 



AIDE-ING THE PRESIDENT 

Scene: A West Point section-room. Time: 1927. 

The first section in Social Science is discovered 
sitting on slim gilt chairs in a well-appointed room. A 
silver tea-service, the kettle hissing on the hob, and 
the tea-table, prov-ided with cream-jug, sugar-bowl, 
and a small dish filled with thin slices of lemon, occu- 
pies an advantageous position near the softly burning 
cannel-coal fire. The room is cozy and well-lighted. 
The section is composed of youths handsome even ac- 
cording to the high West Point standard. They have 
learned how to sit on the fragile chairs without seem- 
ing apprehensive. They are of the corps d'elite, the 
Military Aides Division, undergoing special prepara- 
tion for detail to the White House after graduation. 
The instructor is a woman who has qualified herself 
for the high and important work by several years' ex- 
perience as a social secretary at Washington. A curate, 
holding plates containing thin slices of buttered bread 
and little cakes, stands beside the tea-table. The 
recitation begins. 

Hostess-Instructor. "The young gentlemen who 
acted as visiting ladies will serve to-day those who 
performed the duties of aides at the last recitation." 

Straightway there ensues a well-bred and well- 
ordered commotion. Half of the section remains 



74 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

seated and uncrosses its legs. The other half rises, and, 
murmuring, "One or two lumps, please?" and, "Shall 
I give you cream or a slice of lemon?" proceeds to 
cluster about the tea-table and execute the orders they 
have received. The Hostess- Instructor watches their 
every movement with a keen and critical eye and 
makes suggestions and comments. Finally, when the 
tea has been poured and distributed: 

Hostess-Instructor . "Now, I hope you young gentle- 
men have thoroughly prepared your social-chatter 
lesson. Mr. Dash will recite first." 

Cadet Dash arises from his chair and throwing him- 
self into an attitude of unstudied grace, begins to 
murmur in a beautifully modulated voice a string of 
the polite nothings that pass muster as conversation 
around official tea-tables. After the other members of 
the section have each recited in turn, the Hostess- 
Instructor presents to them the following list of ques- 
tions with the request that answers be returned at the 
next recitation: 

"If the Speaker of the House of Representatives and 
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court arrived at the 
same moment, which would be presented and served 
first?" 

" In functions participated in by the President, the 
Vice-President, the Secretary of State, and ambassa- 
dors of foreign powers, state the order of precedence." 

"At the President's New- Year reception, which is 
received first, the public printer, the Librarian of 



AIDE-ING THE PRESIDENT 75 

Congress, or the president of the Columbian Institute 
for the Deaf and Dumb?" 

"What system have you for memorizing which of 
the wives of Cabinet members and ambassadors take 
lemon and which cream In their tea, and how many 
lumps of sugar. If any?" 

The members of the section take formal good-bye of 
the Hostess- Instructor, and after a profusion of bows 
retire from the room in their settled order of preced- 
ence. 

Yes, indeed, Eunice, it looked at one time as if 
something like this might come to pass. Where the 
demand was so active it seemed Incredible that the 
supply should not be created. The Military Aide at 
the White House reached his highest flower of beauty 
and usefulness in the Roosevelt and Taft administra- 
tions. He was very much a figure in those days. He 
fell into eclipse in the Wilson days after the President 
came in contact with the admirable and invaluable 
Admiral Grayson. Mr. Wilson was first busy and then 
at war and then 111 and had no use for social butterflies. 
And that precisely is what a Military Aide is, an ofhcer 
of the Quartermaster Corps, or the cavalry, or what- 
ever arm of the service, detailed to the White House to 
make himself useful socially as the President or his 
wife may direct. It Is a life full of odd and singular and 
trivial adventure. It is not clear yet what and how 
much use Mr. Harding will make of those who have 



76 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

been assigned to him. I have only seen them at garden 
parties and that was not a true test. The winter season 
is their great time. 

To the present juncture the only military man 
President Harding has had about him is that freshly 
made one, his personal physician, Brigadier-General 
Charles E. Sawyer. And General Sawyer is not a 
social butterfly. Far be it from so. He is a genial 
little scout, full of droll stories, and can make a good 
after-dinner speech that will evoke roars of laughter 
even in these dry times, but over the teacups he would 
be a total loss and no insurance. In choosing his per- 
sonal physician as his personal aide Mr. Harding is 
following Mr. Wilson's example, though never was a 
soldier turned out of more incurably civilian material 
than when the magic words were pronounced that 
made the Marlon homoeopath a brigadier. But pres- 
ently Mrs. Harding may discover how useful can be 
some of the handsome lads of the army and navy who 
have been assigned to the Whit^ House. When she 
does, the Military Aide will perhaps come again into 
his old high and lofty estate. 

I remember and can tell the first time I ever saw a 
military aide to the President earning his salary as 
fixed by law. It was at a reception at the White House 
when Mr. Roosevelt was President. In those days all 
persons invited to White House receptions were di- 
vided into two parts, just like Seidlitz powders, and 
provided with white and blue tickets of admission, I 



AIDE-ING THE PRESIDExNTT 77 

had a white ticket; so did several thousand other per- 
sons. We outnumbered the blue tickets more than ten 
to one; we were the popular branch. The blue tickets 
went in at the front door and met the President 
before the white tickets were admitted to his pres- 
ence. 

We went in at the east entrance of the White House 
opposite the Treasury Building, and left our coats and 
rubber shoes in little racks in the long corridor nor- 
mally devoted to the glass cabinets containing plates 
used on the White House dinner- table when Millard 
Fillmore and Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin 
Harrison and others were President. Presently we 
trailed upstairs in a long queue across the central re- 
ception hall, through the family dining-room and the 
big state dining-room, through the Red Room, and 
into the presence of Mr. Roosevelt. As we shuffled 
nearer and nearer, we noted that opposite the Presi- 
dent and Mrs. Roosevelt stood two military officers in 
full uniform. Gold belts were strapped about their 
waists and at their sides hung swords. They were in- 
troducing the long line to the President and his wife. 
One of them I knew. We had known each other for a 
long time. Yet when I came up to him he looked me 
straight in the eye and asked in a voice intended for 
my ear alone, 

"What name, please?" 

"McDermott," said I, in a clear, penetrating voice. 

A? on^ who might announce, "We-have-with-u§- 



78 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

to-night," the captain bowed to the President and 
presented in a loud, firm voice, 

"Mr. President, Mr. FreUnghuysen." 

The President grabbed my hand as though he had 
been waiting for me all the evening, as though all that 
had gone before was mere waste, and that for him, at 
least, the climax of the evening had come. "How-de- 
do; Mr. Willingham?" he said: "it is a real pleasure 
to see you here to-night." A confused memory of the 
bobbing heads of the wives of the Cabinet, and I found 
myself in the East Room. My experience had been 
that of a dry leaf caught in a strong draught. 

Later in the evening I went up to my friend the 
captain. 

"Why did you tell the President that my name was 
Frelinghuysen?" I asked him. 

He looked at me in blank amazement. 

"I didn't even know you were here," he said. 

I told him what he had done. Then he confessed. 

"To tell you the truth," he said, "after the first two 
or three hundred go by I can't distinguish one face 
from another. It's hard even to tell the men from the 
women. Everything gets sort of blurred before my 
eyes. It's hard to catch the names. People won't 
speak clearly. Besides, I had on a pair of new boots 
to-night and nothing else mattered much. Did you 
ever stand up in a pair of new boots from nine o'clock 
until a quarter of eleven asking people their names and 
then repeating them in a loud, clear voice?" 



AIDE-ING THE PRESIDENT 79 

My next view of a military aide on active service 
was at a reception given by the Vice-President to the 
members of the Senate. It was the usual sort of thing. 
There was a sound of revelry by night, and mineral 
water flowed like champagne. The light, dry rattle of 
airy persiflage filled the air: 

"Who's that dodo in the corner with the pink 
feathers in her hair?" 

"My dear, he's had six glasses already, and there he 
is taking another. I declare he hasn't moved away from 
that table to-night." 

"So good of you. Won't you come in on Thurs- 
day?" 

"Yes, they always do things rather well here. I like 
to come." 

"How hot the rooms are!" 

"Let's slip upstairs and smoke a cigarette." 

Suddenly the five members of the Marine Band, 
barricaded by potted palms at the head of the stair- 
way, struck into "Hail to the Chief." Everybody 
knew what that meant. There was a pause, and then 
we heard a clanking sound as though some one was 
dragging a nest of coal-scuttles up the marble stairs. 
Presently there came in view the President and his 
wife, followed by two resplendent creatures in full 
uniforms, the scabbards of their swords banging 
against the steps as they mounted. It was an impres- 
sive entrance. We welcomed them to our midst. 

But these two instances disclose only the smallest 



8o WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

part of the duties of an aide to the President. They 
must be ready and wilHng and able to do anything 
once. They are paid union wages, but they aren't 
allowed to keep or to have an eight-hour day. Two 
soldiers ideally qualified and fitted to become military 
aides at the White House were old Abdullah Bulbul 
Ameer and Ivan Petroski Skivar. Their glory is pre- 
served in deathless song: 

The sons of the Prophet are hardy and grim 

And quite unaccustomed to fear, 
But most reckless by far both of life and of limb 

V\ as Abdullah Bulbul Ameer. 

If you wanted a man to encourage the van 

Or to harass the foe in the rear, 
Or to storm a redoubt, you had only to shout 

For Abdullah Bulbul Ameer. 

There are brave men in plenty and well known to fame 

In the army that fights for the Tsar, 
But bravest by far was a man by the name 

Of Ivan Petroski Skivar. 

He could imitate Irving, tell fortunes at cards, 

Or play on the Spanish guitar; 
In fact, quite la creme de la creme of the Guards 

Was Ivan Petroski Skivar. 

To be able to Imitate Irving, tell fortunes with cards, 
and play on the Spanish guitar — that gives some idea 
of the range, the versatility, the adaptability that 
should be possessed by an aide to the President. 
When President Taft was making one of his trips 
around the country, an editor down South, who had 



AIDE-ING THE PRESIDENT 8i 

watched the doings in his town, went back to his office 
and wrote this editorial paragraph : 

" President Taft is having the time of Archie Butt's 
life." 

Captain Archie Butt was President Taft's chief and 
favorite aide. He could do anything that old Abdullah 
Bulbul Ameer or Ivan Petroski Skivar could do, and 
then wouldn't be half started. He walked, rode, 
played golf, went shopping, played bridge, attended 
baseball games, and traveled with the President. He 
attended concerts, theaters, went shopping with and 
helped Mrs. Taft at her teas. He dined and lunched at 
the White House almost every time the President 
gave a party. He helped make up the invitation lists 
for the state receptions and dinners, and knew how to 
fix the gramophone when it got out of order. He was 
about the best-liked and most popular man in Wash- 
ington. 

Mr. Roosevelt began the practice of having military 
aides in attendance on his person when he went abroad 
on formal occasions, but he did not take one with him 
every time he stirred about nor did he make them in- 
variably wear their uniforms. It remained for Mr. 
Taft to develop the possibilities of the military aide as 
a companion and as an object to delight the eye of the 
civilian beholder. Mr. Roosevelt used to ride in Rock 
Creek Park, and practice his horse over some low 
jumps that had been erected for his use. He used to 
pick his military aides from young men in the army 



82 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

who had famous names: Lee, Grant, Sheridan, Henry, 
and the Hke. Young Fitzhugh Lee was for a long time 
his favorite riding companion. 

The aides are much courted socially. It is popularly 
supposed to lie in their power to do much for persons 
who entertain social designs upon the White House. 
They are greatly besought for favors. They are very 
discreet and are never tempted to let become public 
the contents of some of the amusing and surprising 
requests they receive from persons who desire to be 
favored above others invited to the White House. 



HAYS: A HUMAN FLIVVER 

Will Hays doesn't belong to the Post-Office Depart- 
ment. He ought to be out at the Bureau of Standards 
in the case in the vault with the meter bar and the 
kilogram from which all our standards of weights and 
measures are derived. For Mr. Hays is a standard of 
measure and of value himself. He is the one hundred 
per cent American we have all heard so much talk 
about. Submit him to any test and you get a perfect 
reaction. He doesn't even stain the litmus paper. 
Apply any native or domestic standard and he com- 
plies with it to a hair-line. He is as indigenous as sassa- 
fras root. He is one of us. He is folks. As such I like 
him and as such I sing him. 

I have noted a lamentable disposition in certain 
quarters to speak lightly of Mr. Hays. This must stop. 
When we make light of him, we make light of and 
decry our peculiar national institutions, our native 
civilization. He is a human flivver, the most charac- 
teristic native product; a two-cylinder single-seater, 
good for more miles per gallon than any other make of 
man. He takes you there and brings you back, in the 
blessed phrase, thus satisfying a great national ideal. 
He is as much a national institution and as purely na- 
tive as the practice of buying enlarged crayon portraits 
or talking machines on the installment plan. 

Mr. Hays cannot be described or interpreted or 



84 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

treated in terms of the eminent Cato style of thing. 
That is not his Hne at all. Besides, as everybody 
knows, Cato was a foreigner as well as a sourball. On 
both counts it is a case of thumbs down for him. 

Unhappily for the truth and for our present under- 
standing of the public men about us, there has lingered 
through the ages a superstition that we must cling to 
the old classic models in observing and commenting 
upon statesmen and holders of high office. Under this 
outworn practice we must think of them as wearing 
togas and speaking in rotund, sonorous phrases from 
which one in schoolboy days sought out through many 
weary hours the gerund and the gerundive or what 
not, as the masters ordered. Whereas, if you pick up a 
Congressional Record, you find them actually saying: 

"The two Prussianizing influences working like 
comajenes to undermine the army are the classifiGa- 
tion system and the General Staff, headed by Sir John 
Pershing, whose ideals and methods are utterly at 
variance with the best traditions of America. Under 
these two institutions injustices sprung up during the 
war and are still bearing fruit. It is not service nor 
merit that count. Favoritism, pull, intrigue, standing 
in with the man above, all play a more important part 
than record, ability, and understanding of and power 
to handle men. Preference is given to men who spend 
their energy in flattering their superiors instead of de- 
feating the enemy. ..." 

No, you cannot make much of Mr. Hays by apply- 





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Copyright by Harris If Swing 

SECRETARY HUGHES AND POSTMASTER-GENERAL HAYS 



HAYS 85 

ing the classic standards. He derives more nearly from 
Mr. Addison Sims of Seattle than he does from Cato. 
If some alchemist in biology (if you know what I 
mean) could extract the essential juices from Mr. 
Addison Sims and all the typical Rotarians, he might 
produce a sort of pale, synthetic Will Hays, but there 
still would be qualities missing. For he is an articulate 
emotionalist if ever there was one; a politician to his 
finger-tips and a strong josher; a real handshaker and 
elbow massager. He is the English sparrow of the 
Harding administration: chipper, confident, unafraid, 
friendly. And he behaves as such. 

You must have read a paragraph, as I did, in the 
newspapers not long ago telling how Postmaster- 
General Hays has hung his office latchstring out in 
fact. The word "private" has vanished from the door 
and you just walk in when you want to see him. In- 
side you'll find a huge room with Mr. Hays at his desk 
in one corner and a lot of chairs scattered around, Mr. 
Hays will hand you his engagement list for the day 
and you can see for yourself how he is fixed for time, 
pick out your own slice of any not already appro- 
priated, and then camp in a chair across the room 
until your time comes. Conferences are held in sight 
if not in actual hearing of everybody who happens to 
be in the room, and there is no usher, no secretary, 
confidential clerk, messenger, or other functionary to 
deal with. 

This procedure does not apply to Senators; but, 



86 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

then, no rule or procedure does apply to them in 
Washington. 

You must have read also how Mr. Hays dictates to 
three stenographers at once and how he arrived at his 
office one day before any of the clerks had reported. 
Well, it's all true. I thought it was press-agent stuff, 
and the most perfunctory and conventional press- 
agent stuff at that, until I went down to the Post- 
Office Department to find out for myself. But the per- 
formance is actually put on as advertised. Any one 
may come in. Seats free, strangers welcome. 

I was glad I was curious enough to go, for I en- 
countered a Greek valet that Mr. Hays has inherited 
or acquired from Colonel George Harvey. This boy — 
he is a mere lad — is seeing life. During the war he 
was an interpreter with the British forces in Mesopo- 
tamia. After the war he came to New York and got a 
job as a waiter in the Knickerbocker Hotel. When the 
Knickerbocker went out of business, Mr. Regan, the 
proprietor, passed the youth on to his friend, Colonel 
Harvey, as a valet of sorts. When the new ambassador 
went to London, the Greek was left behind with Will 
Hays. But not as a valet. Never! Never! The most 
trustworthy and detailed accounts of American his- 
tory fail to reveal a single instance where a man in or 
from Sullivan County, Indiana, ever needed or em- 
ployed a valet to help him put on his clothes or take 
care of his wardrobe. 

"I want to ^ro-gress," said the Greek. 



HAYS 87 

"I want him to be useful," said Will Hays, and at 
once started him to learning typewriting on a second- 
hand machine. 

And now, as the heir of all the ages sits on the eighth 
floor of the Post-Office Building, pegging away at 
"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid 
of the party," and contemplating his new boss, I 
would give a hat to know his unvarnished, actual 
impression of him. I may add that the Greek is not on 
the Government pay-roll. He is a private venture in 
Americanization which is being conducted under the 
personal supervision and at the private expense of the 
Postmaster-General . 

Mr. Hays is at least a contemporary, if not a mod- 
ernist. He believes in the form of Government of the 
United States, the Presbyterian Church of which he is 
an elder, as was his father before him, and the Republi- 
can Party. He accepts and concedes the advantage of 
such modern things as stem-winding watches, self- 
starters, and demountable rims. He is not hidebound. 
And if I may venture to introduce our native speech 
into these undefiled precincts, I'll tell the world that 
he wears snappy clothes. Not all the young men in all 
the spring clothing advertisements have anything on 
him as a nobby dresser. 

He honestly believes, too, In the freedom of the 
press, and does not fear that Max Eastman or any- 
body else can make a dent, much less impede, retard, 
or impair, the institutions and principles he cherishes. 



88 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

The day that I called upon him to verify his open-door 
policy he was considering the case of the Liberator, and 
we talked about it. 

Mr. Hays was clearly puzzled to discover a reason 
or rule of action that made a publication unfit to 
associate in the mails with other second-class matter, 
but mailable at a higher rate of postage. It was no 
surprise when he restored the Liberator to the second- 
class privilege and refunded the excess postage that 
had been paid. Also I came away with the impression 
that Mr. Hays has not forgotten what he learned in 
his schoolboy days, that gas, hot air, or steam com- 
monly are not dangerous or destructive unless confined 
and compressed. Given a vent they are just vapors 
(or vaporings) and will do no harm. Mr. Hays very 
plainly does not want to be a censor; he is sure about 
that. 

Mr. Hays couldn't be other than what he is — a 
typical native product, for he comes from what Joe 
Mitchell Chappie would call the great throbbing heart 
of the country, meaning Sullivan, Sullivan County, 
Indiana, which is right on the edge of the center of 
population. He is not a rustic. But neither is he urban. 
Certainly he is not suburban, as I once thought. 
Groping for the right phrase, I should say he is more 
like a visiting Elk who knows his way about. He is 
forty years old. He has been in politics all his life. He 
is interested and engrossed in the game every day in 
the year. He was a precinct committeeman before he 



HAYS 89 

was twenty-one. Being a Republican chairman of 
something or other has been his Hfe career. Me has 
been chairman of his county committee, State Ad- 
visory Committee, speakers' bureau of the State Com- 
mittee, district chairman, and chairman of the State 
Central Committee, and finally chairman of the Re- 
publican National Committee. He has come to the end 
of the chairmanships his party has to offer. He has 
played out the string. 

One of his ideas, he told me, is that everybody 
should get into politics. He wants more politics rather 
than less politics. His great aspiration is to get all the 
war workers, all the dollar-a-year men, all the Liberty 
Loan drive men and women, all the Red Cross volun- 
teers, all the canteen workers, to transfer the energies 
they put Into war activities into politics. Hays ex- 
pressed this belief to me one day: 

"The day is passing when men will tolerate any- 
where in this country any practices In politics that 
they would not commend In the strictest business and 
professional affairs. When we get our politics entirely 
on this basis, when we live our patriotism daily, we 
will do a citizen's full duty, and not until then. I re- 
peat, I have no use for the individual who is either 
'too busy' or 'too good' to help. He has no just com- 
plaint to make, whatever happens. He Is riding on 
another's ticket, I have an abiding faith that there 
will be an awakened sense of civic duty as one of the 
by-products of the war. 



90 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

"I repeat, and shall continually declare, that what 
we need in this country is not 'less politics,' but more 
attention to politics. Politics is the science of govern- 
ment, and what we need is more attention to the 
science of government. We fought in France to make 
certain everywhere that men should have the right to 
govern themselves, and here in this country, where we 
have that privilege, I insist that we exercise it." 

While I have not read every page of it, I know that 
his life is an open book, for he has been in nearly every 
big factional fight in Indiana for twenty years, and I 
have known fights out there so bitter and so searching 
that they were willing to go back to a man's great- 
great-grandfather, and what he had done to the In- 
dians, to get something on him. Hays has come 
through as clean as a smelt. He is a shrewd, lively, 
industrious, average human being, having a very good 
time out of life. He Is not a great man, but, then, who 
is here at Washington — or anywhere else? Mostly 
they seem to be running in the medium sizes these 
days. 

Mr. Hays is doing a good job in the Post-Ofiice De- 
partment. He is restoring its morale and its efficiency 
by great leaps. A few days after he was sworn In he 
met, was introduced to, and spoke to all of the two 
thousand Post-Ofhce Department employees in Wash- 
ington. Even "Old Tom," the Post-Ofhce cat, was 
greeted. Then he went to the New York and Chicago 
post-offices and met and spoke to all the employees 



HAYS 91 

there. He was putting what he calls "heart" into 
them. The procedure has been an immense success. 
To all of them Mr. Hays said: 

"Every effort shall be exercised to humanize the 
department. Labor is not a commodity. That idea was 
abandoned nineteen hundred and twenty-one years ago 
next Easter. In this department are three hundred thou- 
sand employees. They have the brain and they have the 
hand to do the job well; and they shall have the heart 
to do it well. We purpose to approach this matter so 
that they shall be partners with us in this business. It 
is a great human institution touching every individual 
in the country. It is a great business institution serving 
every individual in the country. I know that with three 
hundred thousand men and women pledged to serve all 
the people and honestly discharging that duty, fairly 
treated, and properly appreciated, all partners with us 
here in this great enterprise, we can do the job. It's 
going to be done." 

That, he has found, is the stuff to give the troops. 
It bucks 'em up, and now they all swear by him and 
believe in him. And so, as he dashes about arriving at 
Cabinet meetings a little breathlessly and always with 
not more than five seconds to spare before the Presi- 
dent enters the cabinet room, he seems fairly content, 
for he is taking his hills on high. And that is always a 
satisfaction. 



WOOD: OUR LONE PRO-CONSUL 

It would have been too absurd if we could have done 
no better for Leonard Wood than to give him as the 
capstone of his varied career the Provostship of the 
University of Pennsylvania. Not that it isn't an honor- 
able post of high distinction, but it is so entirely out 
of General Wood's line of country. He is not an edu- 
cator. He is our lone pro-consul. Under our peculiar 
form of government, as devised by what President 
Harding will call the "founding fathers," there is no 
career for a pro-consul and colonial administrator. 

General Wood would have done much better to have 
been born in England. Then he wouldn't have had to 
cast about as he has in recent years for an outlet for 
his energies, his wholesome ambition, and his desire for 
effective public service. When the Government which 
General Wood organized in Cuba ran down and 
stopped ticking in 1906 because the Cubans did not 
keep it wound up, Mr. Roosevelt sent a one-time 
Nebraska lawyer down there to be Governor-General. 
It is an incurably casual way we have. 

For more than twenty years General Wood applied 
himself to mastering the profession of arms. He be- 
came our best-known professional soldier at home and 
abroad. Not only best-known, but I am willing to 
concede our best-equipped officer. Certainly he is so 
rated by the keenest professional opinion in England 




Copyright by Harris 8f Ewing 

SECRETARY WEEKS AND GENERAL WOOD 



WOOD 93 

and on the continent of Europe. Then the war came 
along and the President as Commander-in-Chief, act- 
ing within his discretion under the statutes made and 
provided in such cases (General Pershing eagerly 
assenting), kept General Wood out of the war. That, 
of course, was a heavy cross for him to bear. He had 
a right to feel frustrated. He didn't complain. A good 
many people shared General Wood's feelings. There 
was a fairly widespread public sense that something 
ought to be done about it. So the General became a 
candidate for the Republican nomination for the 
presidency. That was a curious adventure. 

Julius Caesar and George Washington and Oliver 
Cromwell and Ulysses S. Grant and Andrew Jackson 
and Theodore Roosevelt and quite a number of others 
managed successfully to combine the professions of 
arms, statesmanship, politics, and office-holding, but 
General Wood couldn't quite bring it off. Times have 
changed, and for the moment, at least, there is a sound 
public instinct among us against placing military 
personages in high civil ofhce. 

To Major-General Wood, running for the presidency 
was an open process openly arrived at. His was not a 
bashful candidacy. He was unlike any presidential 
candidate I ever saw ; and I have been much exposed 
to them. He was difficult to focus either as a soldier 
among politicians or as a politician whose true func- 
tion is soldiering. It was easy to decide that he was a 
better soldier than he was a politician, for he is no 



I 



94 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

politician at all. He long had a hankering for politics, 
but every time he dipped into that turbid pool he im- 
periled his status as a soldier. I suspect he was not 
alert enough. It is enough that the politicians thought 
of him as a soldier and many soldiers regarded him 
enviously as a politician and attributed his eminence 
to his political qualities and acumen. Certainly he 
was not a typical politician. He was not a typical 
army officer, either, for he had and has a sound knowl- 
edge of the great world and its affairs. 

Nor can I give him my vote in any public award of 
the Roosevelt mantle. Roosevelt was an eager, ardent, 
practicing politician and public man who liked to think 
of himself as a soldier, which, of course, he was not, for 
he had no sense of subordination or discipline. He en- 
joyed to the utmost the brief adventure of the Spanish 
War, but he never would or could have endured the 
rigidity and monotony and efifacement of army routine. 
General Wood, on the other hand, as I see him, is an 
army man who likes to think of himself as a statesman 
and public man. He has a perfect right to think of 
himself in that capacity, too, and have his dreams. 
But he has got to show qualities and attributes not yet 
revealed before his dreams come true. 

He is a solid man. The upper part of his body is 
finely developed. His arms, wrists, and hands are 
large and thick and powerful. His legs seem too 
short and thin for the immense torso and barrel they 
have to carry. This impression is accentuated by his 



WOOD 95 

lameness, for his left leg drags perceptibly when he 
walks. 

Though he is sixty years old, his head Is well 
thatched with blond hair ; no indication of baldness 
anywhere. He has kept his hair. His face is impassive 
and rather heavy in repose. It doesn't light up much 
even when he talks about the things that Interest him. 
Indeed, he is as undemonstrative a person as you will 
encounter In a day's walk. His emotions (If any, as the 
income-tax forms say) lie deep and are well under 
control. He may be a charter member of the "strong, 
silent man" group, but I do not get that Impression. 
It may be that his apperceptions and antennae are not 
as sensitive as some other persons'. He Is not quick to 
take fire. He Is not colorful ; he does not glow. At any 
rate, he did not glow for me, though I blew and blew 
trying to kindle a flame. 

General Wood has a distinct charm of manner as a 
social being, and I understand perfectly why people 
who are associated with him like him and swear by 
him. His voice is low, pleasant, agreeable, and well 
modulated. He speaks without gesture and without 
emphasis or marked inflection. Even when he Is mak- 
ing a speech he does not gesticulate, but stands In one 
posture, with his right hand grasping his left wrist 
behind him. He is an effective speaker In a simple, 
direct fashion, without heat or passion or rising to the 
heights, and a really interesting talker. 

He was in uniform when last I talked with him, and 



96 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

one that showed traces of his brief service abroad as a 
military observer during the war. Instead of two tin 
stars on his shoulders, his insignia of rank was em- 
broidered, after the French fashion, in silver gilt, and 
he wore cord breeches lighter in color than his khaki 
tunic. 

Also I was amused to note how he had taken the Sam 
out of the Sam Browne belt and thus brought himself 
within regulations. He was girt about the middle with 
a broad heavy belt, but had left off the distinguishing 
cross strap that lies diagonally across the chest over 
the right shoulder. This is a fashion set by Field 
Marshal Haig which many of our overseas officers 
followed. 

Any one who comes in contact with General Wood 
must like his personality. He is a man of ability in his 
chosen field, but unfortunately for him or for us, that 
chosen field is not greatly cultivated here. Administer- 
ing the affairs of an inferior or subject people through 
an army of occupation is one problem ; and that Gen- 
eral Wood knows from experience. Administering the 
affairs of a free and noisy people, all hailing from 
Missouri, is something else again. Ask Mr. Taft or 
Mr. Wilson. Ask anybody. But General Wood was 
wholly within his rights in asking us to allow him to 
make the experiment. And the politicians who con- 
trolled the Chicago Convention of 1920 were equally 
wholly within their rights in declining the General's 
urgently made proffer and selecting Mr. Harding. It 



WOOD 97 

was jusr another one of those well-meant things that 
didn't come off. 

I imagine the routine of the army looked bleak and 
dreary to General Wood after this high and engrossing 
emprise. He could not look for a high and active place. 
The Pershing faction had come into control, and that 
meant friction or effacement for Wood. Mr. Harding 
saved the situation when he offered to send him out 
to Manila as Governor-General, but even that post 
does not offer a very enthralling prospect to a man of 
sixty. Besides, he long ago went through that phase. 
He has done his full share of "pacifying" in our 
Eastern archipelago. He pacified the Moros. Once is 
enough of that sort of thing. The freshness is all worn 
off the Philippines as a scene of active adventure and 
enterprise. I, for one, do not wonder that General 
Wood turned a heeding ear to the University of Penn- 
sylvania when it offered to make him Provost before 
the chance came to go again to the Philippines. It was 
something new, at any rate. 

But what an unexpected road he has followed to 
bring him where he is. When he graduated from the 
Harvard Medical School his first services were given to 
the poor of Boston. Soon he became a contract sur- 
geon in the army. That was the old name for a doctor 
hired by the army from civil life. He served through 
an Indian campaign in the Southwest and won the 
Congressional Medal of Honor. That is the highest 
military distinction we bestow. Then he got his 



98 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

chance. One apparently sure road to advancement in 
this broad expanse is becoming physician to a Presi- 
dent. Dr. Wood was set on that highway. 

When Grover Cleveland was President of the 
United States, he asked Daniel Lamont to secure for 
attendance at the White House the services of a suit- 
able surgeon of the army. An officer, now a Major- 
General of the United States Army, was appealed to, 
and suggested Dr. Leonard Wood. After Mr. Cleve- 
land left the White House, Dr. Wood continued as the 
attending physician to President McKinley. When the 
Spanish War broke out, McKinley commissioned him 
as the Colonel of the Rough Riders. Within a month 
after the first action against the enemy Wood was 
made a Brigadier-General of volunteers by President 
McKinley, and soon afterwards was placed in com- 
mand of the troops and in charge of the civil adminis- 
tration of the Department of Santiago. 

The military duties of General Wood at this time 
were insignificant in comparison with those of the civil 
administration. He cleaned the city, purged it of all 
tropical diseases, and turned it from a pest-hole into a 
modern city in which public works were installed. 
Roads and bridges were constructed, public buildings 
renovated or rebuilt, a school system was established, 
and the laws were executed. 

At the end of a year Wood was made Governor- 
General of Cuba with instructions to convert Cuba 
into a self-sustaining republic. This work required the 



WOOD 99 

adoption of a new constitution, the rewriting of the 
laws of the island, the revision of public works, the 
installation of public schools, and in general all the 
machinery for the proper operation of any Govern- 
ment. 

When the new State of Cuba was established as one 
of the independent republics of the world, Wood was 
sent by President Roosevelt to the Philippine Islands 
where he pacified Mindanao Province. 

Richard Olney, at one time Secretary of State under 
Grover Cleveland, wrote : "... to congratulate you per- 
sonally on the most successful and deservedly suc- 
cessful career, whether soldier or public man of any 
sort, that the Spanish War and its consequences have 
brought to the front." 

At the end of his work in the Philippine Islands, 
Leonard Wood was called to Washington and made 
Chief of Staff of the army, where he undertook the 
preparatory work which later resulted in the student 
officers' camps and the business men's camps that 
ultimately produced, at the time of the declaration of 
war with Germany, approximately 40,000 partially 
trained officers who were made available for service 
with the new army to be raised and sent overseas. 

At the end of his period as Chief of Staff, Leonard 
Wood was assigned to command the Department of 
the East. He then had the opportunity to put into 
active operation the Plattsburg Camps, and after- 
wards other students* camps throughout the country. 



100 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

I think it entirely possible that General Wood's 
career is better known and more highly esteemed 
abroad than it is in this country. Here he has been and 
is an eminent but more or less unrelated figure. We 
have no niche, or place in our national filing system 
for pro-consuls or colonial administrators. As they 
say in business, we aren't organized to handle that 
class of goods. I think, too, we have a general feeling 
that we can pick up one when the need comes. That is 
General Wood's hard luck, and maybe our misfortune, 
but, anyhow, that is how we found him; just by 
chance. There may be another, if we ever need him. 



THE GREAT HITCHCOCK ENIGMA 

If I was a young man in college studying politics, 
meaning, as that would mean, of course, the politics of 
Plato and Aristotle, I would add a touch of actuality to 
the proceeding by writing a thesis for a doctorate with 
this leading caption : " Does He Blow Out the Gas ? — 
Being an Inquiry into the Habits and Activities of 
Frank H. Hitchcock Between Campaigns." I should 
not expect an undergraduate and an amateur to chart 
Mr. Hitchcock's activities while actually engaged in a 
campaign. Even the professionals can't always do that. 
Mr. Hitchcock is a piece-work Warwick. He has a 
closed shop ; he doesn't admit apprentices, nor does he 
belong to the professional politicians' union. He is a 
specialist. His lay is picking Presidential candidates. 
This is not only a piece-work job, but essentially a 
seasonal occupation. Though Mr. Hitchcock has fol- 
lowed his precarious trade for many years — about fif- 
teen, in fact — he is still free from any vocational 
stigmata. He is inscrutable, imperturbable, impene- 
trable, and notably close-mouthed. He offers no more 
inviting avenue of approach for scrutiny and communi- 
cation than a well-made billiard ball. Not that he isn't 
civil, for he is ; but that, like Lord Tennyson's lady 
friend, he is icily regular, splendidly null. One never 
seems to get on, to get anywhere, no matter how pro- 
longed the contact. 



102 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

I know it Is a horrid, vulgar little detail, but Mr. 
Hitchcock never sweats. Even at national conventions 
where, after two or three days, everybody wilts and 
begins to have the bedraggled aspect of something the 
cat has brought in, Mr. Hitchcock is as immaculate, 
as aloof, as specklessly arrayed as one of the superior 
young men in the collar advertisements. He might 
have just come out of the hands of a vacuum cleaner. 
Always he is like that. He greets the embarrassed gods 
nor fears to shake the iron hand of Fate or match with 
Destiny for beers — that sort of thing, if you know 
what I mean. John Oakhurst plus the young Talley- 
rand, plus a second carbon copy of the Admirable 
Crichton, plus the house of Kuppenheimer — that is 
the general impression. 

And nobody seems to know what Is his little game. 
Apparently it is not money. He seems just to like to 
back his fancy. He doesn't run in herds with, or as do, 
the other politicians. He plays a lone hand. He Is 
always a figure apart. To me he Is one of the most 
provocative, puzzling, and intriguing figures in the 
great intricate game of national politics. He provokes 
curiosity and inquiry. 

Of this I am sure. He is a bred gamester with a cold 
passion for the hazard of high stakes and the rigor of 
keen play. He likes the matching of wits and the tor- 
tuous intrigues of politics. He plays at politics as other 
men play at poker or dice. Politics and " big business" 
are the only really big games that we supi)ort In this 



HITCHCOCK 103 

country. They are full of thrills for the men who play 
them. 

In all his political career Mr. Hitchcock has never 
been attached to a cause or championed a principle. 
He has attached himself to men, or more precisely a 
man, and played with other men as pawns. We have 
always had such men in this adventurous, chance- 
loving country, but I do not recall one in politics quite 
so cool, so detached, so completely the technician and 
nothing else as Mr. Hitchcock. We have come to know 
fairly intimately and familiarly the private and per- 
sonal side of most of the men who figure in national 
politics, or, at least, we like to think we have. The 
first natural inquiry we make about any man is, " What 
is his business?" "How did he make his money?" 
"How much has he got?" "What does he do for a 
living?" We always want to know that, don't we ? It 
may be none of our business, but we ask the questions 
just the same — and usually, before we are done, get 
an answer. 

Usually politicians find it to their interest to keep on 
public view all the time. No more than actors do they 
want to be forgotten. Frank Hitchcock and Maude 
Adams are the two exceptions to this rule. Mr. Hitch- 
cock plays his brief quadrennial season, keeps out of 
the limelight while he is on the stage, and then dis- 
appears without trace. What is known about him ? 

I can quickly set down the meager data I have for an 
estimate. He was graduated from Harvard with the 



104 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

class of 1 891. His first public job, I think, was as a 
timekeeper on the construction of the gray stone pile 
on Pennsylvania Avenue, that is the Post Office 
Department Building at Washington. Then he was 
a clerk in the Department of Agriculture. John G. 
Capers told me one night at a public dinner, when 
Hitchcock was there, that the then rising young man 
"used to sort bird feathers over at the Department of 
Agriculture." But that was only a bitter pleasantry. 
Capers and Hitchcock were not on good terms at the 
time, because of some difference over Republican poli- 
tics in South Carolina. 

However, Mr. Hitchcock is an amateur ornitholo- 
gist of some repute, and a genuine bird-lover with a 
respectable knowledge of bird-lore. That was one of 
his points of contact with Theodore Roosevelt. This 
love of birds is his one revealing quality that I know 
about. 

When I first knew Mr. Hitchcock he had left the 
Department of Agriculture and had come over to be 
chief clerk under Secretary Cortelyou of the then newly 
created Department of Commerce and Labor. He 
became a protege and, in a sense, a disciple of Mr. 
Cortelyou, and followed in his footsteps. It was an 
understandable association. Any machine erected or 
constructed by either of these men ran on ball bearings 
and rubber tires. It never clanked. Clanking was a 
fault that neither of them could endure. 

It was Mr. Cortelyou who put Mr, Hitchcock in 



HITCHCOCK 105 

politics. Cortelyou went on from the Department of 
Commerce and Labor to manage Roosevelt's cam- 
paign, and became Postmaster-General. Four years 
later Hitchcock managed Taft's campaign and became, 
in turn, Postmaster-General. Since then he has been 
on his own. 

Every fourth year that can be evenly divided by 
two — that is, every Presidential campaign year — 
brief, fugitive dispatches under Southern date-lines 
begin to appear in the newspapers. They say in sub- 
stance : Mr. Hitchcock was here yesterday conferring 
with local Republican politicians. He declined to be 
interviewed or to discuss the purpose of his visit. The 
gossips and politicians at Washington read these, and 
begin to say : "Hitchcock is rounding up the Southern 
delegates." He is reputed to be a master hand with 
them. 

I have heard many vague stories of how the twigs are 
limed for Southern delegates to Republican national 
conventions ; how these wary, shy, sophisticated birds 
are captured and held together until the people's choice 
is ratified, but never until 1920 did I come upon a 
definite narrative by an actual participant. 

The usual elusive fragmentary news came up from 
the South that year in the late winter and early spring. 
First it was rumored that Mr. Hitchcock was "for 
Lowden," but this was denied. The next surmise had 
him working for Wood, and when the fact did not 
materialize, Washington said In its expressive way. 



io6 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

"Hitchcock has not Hghted." He did not light until 
late, for it was mid-March before he became associated 
with the Wood campaign. This was after John T. King 
had been eliminated and after Colonel William Cooper 
Procter's methods of management had proved not so 
subtle and deft as the situation seemed to require. As 
they said at the time, all the ivory did not go into the 
soap. 

Along in May the Senate decided to inquire into the 
pre-convention campaign expenses of the Presidential 
candidates, and Mr. Hitchcock was the very first wit- 
ness called. Let me isolate here a part of the story he 
told. The Senate didn't get much out of Mr. Hitch- 
cock. I quote pertinent bits : 

" I came to them [the Wood people] under the condi- 
tion, when I entered the campaign, that I should not 
be called upon to collect campaign funds, and I have 
followed that policy. After the announcement of my 
connection with the campaign, various people from 
time to time sent in checks to me, and I turned them 
over to the organization. The total of these checks did 
not exceed from $20,000 to $25,000 for the entire cam- 
paign. 

"My function has been largely advisory, supervi- 
sory. I have endeavored to interest the political leaders 
of the country that I knew, friends of mine and men 
that I have known in previous campaigns, in the Wood 
cause. That has been my principal work." 

"Suppose it was decided to set up contesting delega- 



HITCHCOCK 107 

tlons [in the South], would that question be referred to 
you?" 

" I have never set up any contesting delegations, and 
never intend to. I do not believe in that sort of thing. 

"The principal contest that has developed since I 
have been in the movement is the contest in Georgia, 
and the organization in Georgia is headed by the State 
Chairman, who is recognized by the National Com- 
mittee, and with the approval of the National Com- 
mitteeman, recognized by our National Committee. 
That organization is being contested." 

" How much money have you sent there ?" 

" I think a total from the Washington and New York 
headquarters of $10,000. At first $5000 was sent, and 
then it was reported to us that the opposition in the 
State was flooding the State with money, and they 
asked for additional funds, and we sent $5000 addi- 
tional." 

"What salaries do the Wood headquarters pay ?" 

"I do not know a single salary. I do not get any, 
naturally. I furnish my own room, and I have received 
no money whatever from the Wood organization for 
any purpose." 

Well, there you are. I might go on and give details 
of the trafficking as they were related by other wit- 
nesses, but that would be aside from my present point. 
Mr. Hitchcock did not figure in the squalid details. 
He was not there. 

What else he is interested in besides politics I don't 



io8 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

know. Like a far-off planetary body sweeping along 
its solitary orbit, he is discernible for a brief period 
every fourth year in the umbra or penumbra of some 
Presidential candidate. If he picks a dead one, as, 
poor dear, he so frequently does, he goes out like a 
candle about the middle of June. In the last Presi- 
dential campaign he made a momentary reappearance 
in July. I heard of him sitting on the front row when 
Harding was notified of his nomination at Marion. 
And even while we look he fades away into the void, 
softly, softly, softly. 

What happens to him ? Where does he go ? There is 
your problem and your mystery. 



NORRIS: A NATIVE PRODUCT 

Homespun is the best wear. The important thing about 
common people is that there are so many of them and, 
like common things, they are so necessary. They bear 
all the burdens. All over the world this is the day of 
common men. All values are reckoned in averages. An 
English observer, my friend Philip Gibbs, recently 
among us, has noted rightly enough: 

" It is a nation of nobodies, great with the power of 
the common man and the plain sense that governs his 
way of life. Other nations are still ruled by their 
'somebodies' — by their pomposities and high pan- 
jandrums. But it is the nobodies whose turn is coming 
in history, and America is on their side." 

By "nobodies" Gibbs means, of course, the aver- 
age run of mankind. He has phrased it badly, for 
among us, certainly, the "nobodies," as he calls them, 
are in the aggregate the Great Somebody. I am not 
skilled enough in the terminology of "classes" to 
know where the proletariat ends and the bourgeoisie 
begins. I do not take any stock in the present-day 
effort to divide us into layers or strata with class dis- 
tinctions. My hero is the average man. 

With this brief prelude I present to you George 
William Norris, the junior Senator from Nebraska. I 
submit and proclaim that Norris is the Average Ameri- 
can, and as such I celebrate him. If you want to know 



no WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

America, you must know Norrls first. Not only is he 
the Average American, but he is the average of all the 
average home-bred citizens of the Republic. He is the 
least common multiple, the lowest common denomi- 
nator, the greatest common divisor. 

What Norrls thinks, what Norrls believes. Is what, 
in the long run, a clear majority of the country thinks 
and believes. He Is not an extraordinary person. If 
you think that, you miss the point. He is the supreme, 
perfect type of the ordinary person, and a most useful 
man to know and watch in this time of social and 
economic flux and change and bewilderment and up- 
heaval. If you do not know him, I am doing you a 
favor to Introduce you to him. In a large way of 
speaking, nothing that vitally affects all of us can 
come to pass In this country unless the Norrls type 
approves of it. He Is the symbol of the forces which 
make final decisions with us. 

Get on any train in the corn and hog States any- 
where between Chicago and Lincoln, Nebraska, and 
you will find a dozen men like George William Norrls. 
They are earnest folk, probably have a Sunday-School 
class at home, and smoke five-cent cigars with a relish 
which Is the truest and surest visible manifestation 
among adult males of real leaders of the simple life. 
They have a first-hand grasp of the simple elements of 
public affairs and a rough-working knowledge of na- 
tional governmental machinery and procedure. They 
do not know the subtleties and chicanery and the 




CopyrUjIit by Harris Sr Ew'mg 



SENATOR GEORGE W. NORRIS 



NORRIS III 

wheels vvithirx wheels of politics as it is played in the 
East. 

There aren't many men like Norris in the large 
Eastern cities, at least not in politics. But in the Mid- 
dle West they are becoming, if they are not already, 
the dominant type. They are plain, simple people who 
have worked hard all their lives and who have known 
what it is to be poor, but not the squalid, sordid pov- 
erty of the congested East that kills hope and crushes 
the life and strength and self-respect out of men. I 
should say that the strongest characteristic of men of 
the Norris type (it seems impossible to differentiate him 
in any way from the type) is a strong and active feeling 
of fellowship. They are marked by a notable desire to 
be helpful to those who have not been so fortunate. 
As nearly as possible they want every one to share and 
share alike the common privileges of human society. 
They are good, useful citizens — not "prominent citi- 
zens," but useful citizens. There is a whole world of 
difference. 

If George Norris ever declares for the proletariat 
revolution, I, for one, will begin to make ready for its 
coming. Norris is the surest political barometer in the 
United States. He can't help being it. It is an inherent 
quality, like the wetness of water. He is on the domi- 
nant and majority side in any great mass movement 
in this country under the operation of a natural law 
that is just as sure and irresistible and inevitable as 
the law which compels water to seek its own level. 



112 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

Mr. Wilson could not get the country in a mind to 
go to war until Norris and his like were clearly satisfied 
that it was the right thing to do. When they saw the 
righteousness of it, the rest was easy. I believe you 
could have found nowhere any clearer vision and 
understanding of the processes of mind of the country 
at large, while public opinion was making on the 
league of nations and the peace treaty, than by ob- 
serving Norris's mental reactions as he changed from 
an ardent believer in the league idea to one of the 
"bitter-ender" opponents of the league and treaty. 
Take his own words: 

"I started this thing in good faith. No man had 
more honest and beautiful intentions than I had when 
that peace conference met at Versailles. No man in all 
the world was more anxious to have a permanent peace 
than I. No man under any flag would sacrifice more, 
according to what he had to sacrifice, than I would to 
have brought about a league that was honest and 
honorable. I believed that our allies were honest and 
honorable. I thought they were square; I thought 
they were fair; and when the league of nations part of 
the treaty was first given to the world, while I dis- 
liked some of it very much, I was almost on the point 
of swallowing it. I was willing to sacrifice almost any- 
thing to get the right kind of league of nations. To me 
it seemed that Article X was almost damnable. I 
thought that the article providing for disarmament 
might not mean anything, and other things the same 



NORRIS 113 

way; and yet I said to myself, 'They are honest, we 
are honest, and if all of us are going into this honestly, 
1 can overlook a good many things that don't seem 
right.* 

"Later it developed what they had done in making 
the treaty; but although it seemed to me there were a 
lot of sins even in the league as they had promulgated 
it, when the treaty came forth it made the league look 
like a banner of purity compared to the deceit, the 
wrong, and the sin that was bound up in that treaty. 

"When I discovered that these same men who had 
talked eloquently here to us had in their pockets secret 
treaties when they did it; when I discovered that they 
pulled out those secret treaties at the peace table, in 
contravention and in contradiction to every agree- 
ment that they made when we entered the peace con- 
ference; when I saw that they were demanding that 
these secret treaties be legalized; and, more than all, 
when I saw our own President lie down and give in and 
submit to the disgrace, the dishonor, the crime, and 
the sin of that treaty, then I said: 'Great God! I 
don't believe I want to have any dealings with any of 
you people. I am suspicious of you all the way through. 
You are dishonest. You have not been fair with us or 
with the world. You have been wicked. You have 
concluded to act here just the same as you were acting 
in barbarous days, after proclaiming to us and after 
we believed that you were in earnest and fighting for 
democracy to build a peace, a world peace, a league of 



114 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

nations that would bring peace and happiness forever 
to a suffering people.' 

" I think any honest believer in the religion of Jesus 
Christ, when he understands what we are asked to do, 
would suffer death before he would advise us to give 
our official sanction to the treaty as it stands." 

Now the sole interest and value of Norris's state of 
mind and of his fervent declaration about the sin in- 
herent in the treaty is that he believes It to his depths 
and that he would go to the stake for his conviction. 
The seat of popular opinion and political control in 
the United States resides and has resided for some 
years in that vast stretch of fertile territory between 
the Alleghanies and the intermountain States of the 
West. It is the Mississippi Valley and the States on 
either side of it. That is the heart of this country; 
that is the producing area; that is where the corn and 
the hogs and the wheat and the ore and the oil and the 
cotton and the sugar come from. We are what we are 
as a people because they are what they are. Roughly 
speaking, the rest of us outside of that land of fatness 
derive our sustenance and existence by trafficking in 
and fabricating what they produce. Now Norris is of 
the very pith and marrow and sinew of these people. 
He thinks as they think, he lives as they live, his 
processes of thought are their processes of thought. 

Norris is of average size, well-muscled and wiry. 
He is quiet in manner, with an open, frank, friendly 
face. His rough hair is gray. He is as industrbus as a 



NORRIS 115 

beaver. When one comes to describe him, one sees 
that there isn't an extraordinary thing about him. He 
is the average American born of clean stock in a farm- 
ing country who has Hved all his life upon a plane of 
perfect equality and upon terms of absolute democ- 
racy with his neighbors. That was one of the interest- 
ing things about the "insurgency" movement which 
brought Norris to the fore in the House and eventu- 
ally in the Senate. Its propulsive force and motive 
power came from average men. It was an average 
man's movement. It is doubly interesting now as a 
social phenomenon, as foreshadowing the present 
world-wide groping among common average men for 
a more equitable diffusion of authority and responsi- 
bility in self-government. 

For a taste of the simple quality of the man take 
this confession of faith made the other day on the 
Senate floor. Norris had talked for three days about 
the oppression of the Koreans and Chinese by the 
Japanese. He had urged that the Japanese were try- 
ing with all their might to stamp out Christianity in 
the Orient. Then this autobiographical revelation: 

"I am not a member of any church; I am not a 
member of any religious organization; but my hand 
shall wither and my lips shall be sealed in eternal 
silence before I will ever give my official approval to 
any act that will stamp out the religion of Jesus Christ 
and establish paganism in its stead. I hope that we 
can meet every question that comes before us and 



ii6 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

decide whether it is right or wrong. If it is right, then 
let us approve it. 

" I hope that I may be given the humble privilege of 
being classed as one of the followers of the religion 
proclaimed by Abou Ben Adhem. Old Ben Adhem 
was awakened in the night by an angel. The angel was 
writing in the book. Ben Adhem asked what he was 
doing and the angel said : * I am writing the names of 
those who love the Lord.' Ben Adhem asked: 'Is my 
name written there?' and the angel said: 'No.' Then 
Ben Adhem said: 'I pray thee, then, write me as one 
that loves his fellow men.' The angel wrote and van- 
ished, and the next night Ben Adhem was awakened 
again from his slumber. The same angel appeared, 
and he bore a scroll, upon which was written in letters 
of flaming fire the names of those who loved the Lord, 
and, behold, Ben Adhem's name led all the rest." 

I submit that it discloses an ineradicable and in- 
grained simplicity of mind to tell the Senate the story 
of Abou Ben Adhem and apply it to one's self. But it 
does reveal a lack of self-consciousness and a clear self- 
knowledge. 

Norris has had a career that has become conven- 
tional in his part of the United States. He was born on 
a farm in Sandusky County, Ohio, in 1861, and spent 
all of his early life on the farm where he was born. He 
learned what real, honest, grubbing work was at an 
age when more carefully nurtured children are being 
taught to cut out paper flowers and truncated cones 



NORRIS 117 

in the kindergartens. His father died when he was a 
small child, his only brother was killed in the Civil 
War, and his mother was left in straitened circum- 
stances. Young Norris "worked out" among the 
neighboring farmers by the day and month during the 
summer, and attended district school during the win- 
ter. He acquired enough education to become a school- 
teacher, and moved West. He lived in several of the 
Far Western and Northwestern States, and taught 
school in abandoned barns and chicken-houses and 
other queer shacks that he had to fit up with his own 
hands. 

By what wizardry of finance this young itinerant 
school-teacher saved enough money to come back to 
Ohio and pay his way through Baldwin University at 
Berea, Ohio, and the Northern Indiana Normal School 
at Valparaiso, Indiana, even he cannot now explain. 
But he did, and later studied law while teaching, and 
was admitted to the bar in 1883. Two years later he 
went to Nebraska and settled at McCook. 

Law and politics are virtually identical pursuits 
among small-town lawyers who want to "get on" in 
the world. Norris quickly became prosecuting attor- 
ney at McCook. He held the place three terms, and 
then in 1895 and again in 1899 was elected a district 
judge. He was on the bench, and it was as Judge 
Norris that he was elected to Congress in 1903. He 
sat in the House over nine years until 191 3, when he 
was translated to the Senate, where he will probably 



ii8 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

remain as long as he likes. He attained a country-wide 
celebrity in 19 lo when, on a Saturday afternoon in 
March as the climax of the "insurgent" movement in 
Congress, he caused the rules of the House to be 
changed in an important and essential particular; 
diverted from the ofhce of the Speaker a great share of 
its power, and shook and humbled and defeated Mr. 
Cannon after a series of dramatic and exciting scenes 
such as are witnessed in Congress once in a generation. 
He never sought publicity or notoriety or claimed 
"leadership" because of that achievement. When he 
had done what he set out to do, he relapsed into the 
ranks. But since that day he has had to be reckoned 
with. He became notable, not because he was differ- 
ent, but because there were so many like him for 
whom he was articulate. 

In his manner, in his processes of mind, and in his 
mode of living he is as simple, as plain, as direct, and 
as unassuming as when he was teaching the three R's 
in Idaho. He knows more, of course, than he did then. 
His mind is more mature and has broadened. His con- 
victions, however, for the main part, are based on 
what he has personally known and seen and not on 
deductions from wide reading. He is not afraid to 
think and do for himself, because he has never known 
anything else. 

Norris derives his mental sustenance and stimula- 
tion from a process analogous to cracking hickory 
nuts with his teeth and picking out the "goodies" 



NORRIS iiQ 

with a hairpin. He gets at the meat of a thing slowly 
and by a laborious process; but he gets it, and it's all 
his; he earns it. No personal animus or self-interest 
has been disclosed in anything that he has said or done 
in his public life at Washington. Whether right or 
wrong, to all appearances he is disinterested and striv- 
ing for what he conceives to be the general welfare. 

Norris could not be called, as the phrase runs, "a 
natural-born leader." He has never pretended to be 
one; that is not his strength or the measure of his 
value. He does not contend for personal preferment. 
He is always a part of the irresistible mass that shows 
the immovable bodies how to take a joke. 

He usually does what he sets out to do and makes a 
clean job of it. As they say out in Red Willow County: 
"George makes good on his proposition." He is a 
reassuring figure in public life in these troublous days. 
He is also a darn good fellow, and I like him, and now 
that you have been introduced, I hope you will like 
him, too. 



WASHINGTON'S HARDEST JOB 

To Mr. George B. Christian, Jr., who has come out of 
Marion with Mr. Harding to be Secretary to the Presi- 
dent, I can give one bit of reassurance. There is one 
thing he can be sure of ; he will never be bored. Some- 
thing or other will happen to him every day. When he 
has served a term at the White House and goes out to 
other employment, no matter what he has to do, it will 
seem easy to him. 

Being a President's interpreter and steersman is the 
most difficult and trying job in the Government serv- 
ice at Washington. To men who make successes of it, 
the subsequent rewards are great and satisfying, and 
even some of the failures seem to do fairly well by 
themselves when they resign to accept more congenial 
employment. 

The Secretary to the President is not a private sec- 
retary, but a public secretary. His obligations to Mr. 
Harding's callers and correspondents are just as valid 
as his obligations to Mr. Harding. He must serve two 
masters and please both of them at peril of his head. 
W^en he is working at the job he is as busy as a Swiss 
bell-ringer. He must know everybody and everything. 
He must be able to appraise the actors on the Washing- 
ton stage not only at their true value, but at their own 
estimate of tjieir value. He must know what is going 



WASHINGTON'S HARDEST JOB 121 

on in legislation, politics, and society, and of all the 
thousands who come to the White House on one mis- 
sion or another he must unerringly separate the sheep 
from the goats. He must work all day every day and 
keep his temper and his healtii. He must always 
remember that when he does anything praiseworthy, 
the credit must go to the President and the Adminis- 
tration. Whenever the President makes a mistake or 
commits an indiscretion, the perfect secretary must 
offer himself as the sacrifice. 

That is all Mr. Christian has to do, and for it a grate- 
ful Government allows him $7500 a year and the use of 
two motor cars. Also he is invited out to lunch and to 
dinner more than is good for him ; but that can't be 
helped and is a part of the job. 

Mr. Christian has come to the job at a time when it 
sadly needs to be restored to its old dimensions and 
authority. Mr. Wilson altered during his tenure of the 
White House many Washington values that had come 
to be accepted as permanent. He pared down the 
stature of many public and ofifiLcial figures. No figure 
or personality of consequence in the Washington 
scheme of things as it existed prior to Mr. Wilson's 
arrival has been so obliterated, blurred in outline, 
reduced in value, and decreased in functioning capac- 
ity as that of Secretary to the President. No picture 
in the Washington gallery offered less resistance to the 
effacing sponge than did Mr. Tumulty. He and the 
President between them made the secretaryship con- 



122 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

form to the geometrical definition of a point : occupy- 
ing a position in space but without dimensions. 

We here at Washington are watching with friendly 
eyes to see if Mr. Christian can rehabilitate his job and 
restore it to its old splendor in the local scheme of 
things. He has yet to prove his quality. We only know 
of him yet what he has told us : that he is forty-eight 
years old — eight years younger than the President ; 
that he was "engaged in the limestone industry in 
Marion County" until 191 5, when he became private 
secretary to Senator Harding, and was then trans- 
lated with his old-time friend, neighbor, and employer 
to the White House. That is the foundation on which 
he must build. 

He is a gravely pleasant young man, of an even 
temper, apparently not easily flustered or put out or 
excited ; in many respects a fairly good second carbon 
copy of his chief. He cannot bluff his way through. 
He, like the President, will soon come to be known for 
what he is. His value, his fiber, his quality are being 
searchingly appraised. His relations with his chief can- 
not be hidden. If the President trusts him, relies upon 
him, gives him responsibilities, or is guided by him in 
any degree, a good many people soon come to know it. 

If Mr. Christian ever comes to my house in the eve- 
ning to smoke a pipe, I'd like to tell him about some of 
the figures who have gone before him and with whom I 
have had traffic and dealings. George B. Cortelyou was 
the best one I ever knew. 



WASHINGTON'S HARDEST JOB 123 

I would tell Mr. Christian first how we all felt when 
President Wilson fell ill in the autumn of 1920 and all 
the news from his bedside, which had become the 
seat of government, had to be screened through Mr. 
Tumulty. The importance of the office of Secretary to 
the President was thrown into high relief. It is a 
matter of public concern who fills the job. 

Since Mr. Wilson was unable to transact public 
business in his office, it followed that his only channel 
of news of what was going on in the world that affected 
his duties and responsibilities as President was through 
his secretary. It is equally true that the only source of 
news Congress, the executive officials of the Govern- 
ment, and the public had of Mr. Wilson's condition, 
his decisions, his desires, and his attitude of mind on 
the several immediate, pressing public problems that 
came to a head was through Mr. Tumulty. 

When Mr. Wilson collapsed on his return to Wash- 
ington after his breakdown on his Western trip, the 
whole world was concerned and alarmed. The Presi- 
dent had in his hands the strings of control of events in 
the making that affected the destinies and literally the 
lives of millions of people at home and abroad. It was 
not curiosity about an eminent figure, but sheer, vital, 
absorbing self-interest that made a startled and appre- 
hensive world turn to the White House for exact, truth- 
ful, trustworthy news of the patient, what ailed him, 
how sick he really was, and whether he would get well 
again. 



124 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

There were officials of the Government at Washing- 
ton, the Vice-President, the members of the Cabinet, 
who would have been charged with new and complex 
and difficult duties in the event of Mr. Wilson's inca- 
pacity, and who were not told in the beginning any- 
thing beyond the bulletins given out for publication in 
the newspapers. And these bulletins were written in 
such language as to give rise to the gravest forebodings. 
Their tone and their phraseology were such as are 
always reserved to give warning that hope has been 
given up. 

A clumsy, forbidding mystery was made out of the 
President's Illness, in which sinister rumors bred like 
maggots. There was lacking an articulate voice at the 
White House, a spokesman with enough vision and 
understanding to perceive his obligations, not only to 
the President, but to the whok people, and to tell the 
whole truth simply and sincerely In a way that would 
command respect and Instant acceptance. There 
should be no more question about the authenticity, 
validity, and scrupulous accuracy of a "White House 
statement" than there is about a Supreme Court 
decision. 

But Mr. Tumulty was not wholly to blame. He had 
been cast for a role he was not qualified to play. I think 
a summary of the Washington verdict on the relations 
between Mr. Wilson and Mr. Tumulty would have 
been, "The President is fond of Joe." But that Mr. 
Tumulty was ever a counselor, or even a trusted con- 



WASHINGTON'S HARDEST JOB 125 

fidant, there is nothing to show. The relation between 
the two men had become fixed at Trenton, before Mr. 
Wilson came to Washington, and neither was prepared 
to make the change when it became necessary greatly 
to enlarge and radically increase the power and dis- 
cretion enjoyed by the Secretary. 

Mr. Taft had not been in the White House more 
than two years before he had taken on his third Sec- 
retary. He finally found the man he needed in Charles 
D. Hilles. It was a happy day for Mr. Taft when Mr. 
Hilles came to the Executive ofiices for he needed a 
Secretary of capacity as badly as any of our Presidents 
have ever needed one. 

A Secretary is largely measured by his tact and skill 
and intuition in letting in to the President only those 
persons whose affairs justify invasion of the Execu- 
tive's time. Men have sought an appointment with the 
President to ask if he would allow them to test a toy 
motor-boat in the basin of the fountain at the rear of 
the White House. 

One fine spring morning two Congressmen asked one 
of Mr. Taft's earlier secretaries for an appointment to 
present a delegation to the President. The request was 
granted. On the day appointed, the two Congressmen 
appeared with more than two thousand men and 
women. They simply overran the Wliite House offices 
and grounds. Mr. Taft, with great good-nature, shook 
hands with about five hundred before giving up the 
job. His whole schedule of appointments for the day 



126 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

was hopelessly disarranged. A great many other per- 
sons suffered inconveniences. The two Congressmen 
could not be made to see that they had imposed upon 
the President or upon those others who had engage- 
ments with Mr. Taft. A competent and wary Secre- 
tary would have found out the size of the delegation 
and all about it before making the appointment. 

The job of Secretary to the President has been made, 
and should be, as important as that of a Cabinet officer. 
A present-day Secretary should be more than a mere 
sublimated stenographer. The office has no statutory 
definition. One Secretary may be a good stenographer, 
another a politician, another a social leader, another a 
nonentity, another a chump. All these different varie- 
ties have flourished their brief day in Washington. 
The office has greatly and visibly increased in power, 
prestige, and importance as new burdens have been 
thrown upon the President and as the conception of 
the powers of the office of the President itself has been 
enlarged. 

There have been twenty-eight different Presidents of 
the United States, and all of them had one or more 
private secretaries, but the list of men to whom the 
office has proved a "stepping-stone" to further hon- 
ors and an enlarged sphere of life is a short one. John 
Hay, John G. Nicolay, Horace Porter, Daniel Lamont, 
George Bruce Cortelyou, William Loeb, Jr., and 
Charles D. Hilles are names that stand out from the 
list of those who have held the office. The others fell 



WASHINGTON'S HARDEST JOB 127 

back into oblivion, or never emerged from it, even 
while they were in the White House, and their subse- 
quent activities and exploits arc unrecorded. 

The enlarged dimensions of the office of Secretary to 
the President were marked out by Daniel Lamont 
when he came to Washington in the first Cleveland 
administration as Secretary to the President. He had 
been Governor Cleveland's Secretary at Albany. In 
Mr. Cleveland's second administration Mr. Lamont 
was Secretary of War. During his tenure of office as 
Secretary to the President, Mr. Lamont to some extent 
made it an added Cabinet position. His personal in- 
fluence with Mr. Cleveland was on a par with that of 
any of the seven counselors provided by law. 

After Lamont comes Cortelyou, who was confiden- 
tial stenographer to Grover Cleveland, Secretary to 
McKinley and to Roosevelt, Chairman of the Repub- 
lican National Committee, Postmaster-General, Sec- 
retary of Commerce and Labor, and Secretary of the 
Treasury in the Roosevelt Cabinet, Mr. Cortelyou 
was very nearly the ideal Secretary to the President. 
He had political sagacity and experience. He knew 
public men, he was a competent executive, and could 
dispose of an enormous amount of routine business 
without hitch or flurry. He had an intimate and de- 
tailed knowledge of the processes of government, was 
careful and cautious to a degree, had a manner that 
inspired confidence, and was always the master of him- 
self and of circumstances. There were never "unfor- 



128 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

tunate slips" when Mr. Cortelyou was in the White 
House Executive offices. Everything ran as smoothly 
as an eight-day clock. 

When Cortelyou was Secretary, every premeditated 
Presidential utterance was visced and verified in ad- 
vance of its publication. Every affirmation of fact 
was authenticated. If McKinley said in a speech that 
the world's stock of gold on such and such a date was 
such an amount, the assertion was sent to the Treasury 
Department for verification. Every quotation he used 
was looked up. Every assertion of historical fact was 
run down carefully. Cortelyou even ventured to rewrite 
and ameliorate the tone of some of the Presidential 
letters. This was necessary more often with Roosevelt 
than with McKinley. 

Loeb, who succeeded Cortelyou when that efficient 
private secretary went into the Cabinet, left a mixed 
impression in Washington. While he was Secretary to 
Roosevelt, the newspapers continually blossomed with 
the headlines " Loeb Takes the Blame." It would have 
been the same had an archangel held the post. No 
man had a more faithful and devoted servant, or a 
more loyal and untiring assistant than Roosevelt had 
in Loeb. Though Loeb customarily figured in the 
newspapers as a sacrificial goat, he was a competent 
man in the post and did not allow the dimensions of 
the office to shrink during his incumbency. He had 
many and curious adventures. 

Presidents from Washington to McKinley had pri- 



WASHINGTON'S HARDEST JOB 129 

vate secretaries. When John Addison Porter came to 
Washington in 1897 to serve William McKinley in that 
capacity, he assumed the title of Secretary to the Presi- 
dent. The next year Congress dropped the old title 
and appropriated money to pay the salary of a Secre- 
tary to the President. 

The line of Presidential Secretaries begins with 
Tobias Lear and Lawrence Lewis, who served under 
Washington. In the beginning and even down to 
Garfield's time, our Presidents seem to have had a 
fondness for bestowing the secretar>'ship upon young 
kinsmen. Lawrence Lewis was Washington's "sister 
Betty's son." The letter is preserved in which the 
young man accepted the post : 

Fauquier Co. 
July 24, 1797 
My dear Sir : 

I return you my sincere thanks for the kind invita- 
tion I received when last at Mount Vernon to make it 
my home, and that whilst there my services would be 
acceptable. This invitation was the more pleasing to 
me from a desire from being serviceable to you, and 
from a hope in fulfilling those duties assigned me I 
should derive some improvement by them. 

Untutored in almost every branch of business, I can 
only promise a ready and willing obedience to any 
instruction or command you may please to give. I 
should have been with you ere this, but for the un- 
avoidable detention of my servant's running away, and 



130 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

that at a time when I was nearly ready for my depar- 
ture. I have been ever since in pursuit of him without 
success. The uncertainty of getting a servant or my 
runaway will probably detain me until 25th of August, 
but not a moment longer than is unavoidable. 
With sincere regard for my Aunt, and family 
I remain, your affectionate Nephew 

Lawrence Lewis 
Gen. George Washington 

Of Tobias Lear, President Washington's principal 
private secretary, fugitive glimpses are caught in the 
diaries of the time. When the first Senate met at New 
York City it presented, in the course of its business, 
an address to President Washington. The entire 
Senate "proceeded in carriages" to President Wash- 
ington's house to make the presentation. Says Maclay 
in his diary : 

"We were received in the ante-chamber. Had some 
little difficulty about seats, as there were several want- 
ing : from whence may be inferred that the President's 
major domo is not the most provident, as our numbers 
were well enough known. We had not been seated 
more than three minutes, when it was signified to us 
to wait on the President in his levee room. . . . 

"The President took his reply out of his pocket. He 
had his spectacles in his jacket pocket ; having his hat 
in his left hand and the paper in his right. He had too 
many objects for his hands. He shifted his hat between 



WASHINGTON'S HARDEST JOB 131 

his forearm and the left side of his breast. But taking 
his spectacles from the case embarrassed him. He got 
rid of this small distress by laying the spectacle case 
on the chimney piece. Colonel Humphreys stood on 
his right, Mr. Lear on his left. Having adjusted the 
spectacles, which was not very easy, considering the 
engagements on his hands, he read the reply with 
tolerable exactness, and without much emotion." 

Thus early in our national life was the fashion set of 
criticizing the Secretary for anything that goes wrong 
at the White House. He should have provided more 
chairs for the Senators. Here is a crisply drawn picture 
of President Washington's secretaries in a social aspect: 

"We went to the President's to dinner. The com- 
pany were : President and Mrs. Washington, Vice- 
President and Mrs. Adams, the Governor and his wife, 
Mr. Jay and wife, Mr. Langdon and wife, Mr. Dalton 
and a lady, perhaps his wife, and Mr. Smith, Bassett, 
myself, Lear and Lewis, the President's two secretaries. 
The President and Mrs. Washington sat opposite each 
other, in the middle of the table. The two secretaries, 
one at each end. It was a great dinner, and the best of 
its kind ever I was at. . . . It was the most solemn dinner 
ever I sat at. Not an health drank — scarce a word 
said, until the cloth was taken away. . . . The President 
kept a fork in his hand, when the cloth was taken 
away, I thought for the purpose of picking nuts. He 
eats no nuts, but played with the fork, striking on the 
edge of the table with it." 



132 WASHINGTON CLOSE UPS 

When Mr. Hilles became Secretary to President Taft 
a woman In Virginia whom he did not know wrote to 
him to say that she knew the President had at last 
found the right man because of "your prompt atten- 
tion and personally written reply to my letter to you 
endorsing the J. V. Bickford site for the new post-ofhce 
at Hampton, Virginia." This same correspondent sug- 
gested that "in order to obtain the consolation of 
philosophy," Mr. Hilles should read Leviticus, i6th 
chapter : 20th to 22d verse. He found this : 

"20. And when he had made an end of reconciling 
the holy place and the tabernacle of the congregation, 
and the altar, he shall bring the live goat. 

"21. And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the 
head of the live goat, and confess over him all the 
iniquities of the children of Israel and all their trans- 
gressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head 
of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a 
fit man Into the wilderness. 

"22. And the goat shall bear upon him all their 
iniquities unto a land not inhabited ; and he shall let go 
the goat in the wilderness." 

As usual when an apposite quotation can be found 
from the Bible, there is really nothing more to say. 



FROM THE HOUSE GALLERY 

We are John Hicks and wife from Hicksville. We have 
come to the national capital to see the sights. We came 
on a round-trip excursion ticket that allows us five 
days here when this beautiful city is all abloom and 
June is at its best. We must see everything that is to 
be seen, and that means that we must carefully parcel 
out our time. 

We go through the State, Army, and Navy buildings, 
and take a ride in a sight-seeing car through the resi- 
dence district. We find that we must go up in the 
Washington Monument, visit Mount Vernon and 
Arlington, see them make the money at the Bureau of 
Engraving and Printing, go through the Treasury 
vaults and be allowed to hold a package containing 
$3,000,000 in our own hands, and — but before we go 
anywhere else we must go to the Capitol. In the cen- 
tral rotunda we are accosted by an affable and vol- 
uble guide. He has already collected the nucleus of a 
following, and tells us that he is just about to start on a 
trip "to all points of interest about the historic build- 
ing." We join him. It is only twenty-five cents, and he 
shows you everything. We see the statues and the big 
pictures on the walls, and the whispering stones, and 
Senator La Follette emerging hurriedly from his com- 
mittee room, with a statesmanlike frown on his brow, 



134 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

and then we are ready to go into the gallery of the 
House. 

It isn't a bit as you would expect it to be. We all get 
seats in the front row of the gallery and look down on 
the floor of the big chamber. It is nearly empty. A 
little knot of men are gathered in the center of the 
House, and two of them are on their feet talking at one 
another. Sometimes their voices rise so that we can 
hear what they say, but we don't understand what it 
means. For the most part they wrangle in tones that 
do not carry to us. Where is Cannon ? Where is the 
Speaker? The guide explains that the Speaker does 
not preside when the House is in Committee of the 
Whole. We don't ask him what that means, because 
we don't want to show our ignorance. A little gray- 
headed man, with a square gray beard, and wearing 
gold-rimmed spectacles, is in the Speaker's chair. 
That is Mann of Illinois, says the guide. Who is he 
and what did he ever do ? Why, says the guide, he is 
the Great Objector. And what does he object to, we 
ask him ? Everything, says the guide. 

We sit there nearly an hour trying to find out what's 
going on. We learn why the newspapers back home do 
not print a detailed and comprehensive record day by 
day of what is said on the floor in the debates in the 
two branches of Congress. Here is just exactly what 
happened while we sat in the gallery watching the big 
men of the country making the laws of the land : 

The House, being in Committee of the Whole House 



FROM THE HOUSE GALLERY 135 

on the state of the Union and having under consid- 
eration the bill (H.R. 71 177) making appropriations 
for sundry civil expenses of the Government for the 
fiscal year ending June 30, and for other purposes : 

Mr. Blank. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous con- 
sent to proceed for ten minutes. 

The Chairman. Is there objection ? 

Mr. Dash. I shall have to object to that. 

Mr. Blank. I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 
five minutes. 

Mr. Dash. I shall object. 

Mr. Blank. I move to strike out the last word. 

The Chairman. The gentleman has already made 
that motion. 

Mr. Blank. Then the last two words. 

Mr. Dash. I make the point of order that that is 
not in order. 

The Chairman. The Chair sustains the point of order. 

Mr. Blank. I make the point of no quorum. I pro- 
pose to answer this speech, and you cannot keep me 
from it — 

The Chairman. The gentleman is out of order. 

Mr. Blank. Except by resorting to technical matters. 

Mr. Doe. I suggest to the gentleman from Illinois 
that he wait until the gentleman from California can be 
present, and then we will have unanimous consent. 

Mr. Blank. Oh, I could not wait. 

The Chairman. This discussion is entirely out of 
order, an4 the gentleman will please be seated. The 



136 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

gentleman from Illinois makes a point of order of no 
quorum. The Chair will count. (After counting.) One 
hundred and forty-two gentlemen are present ; a 
quorum. The Clerk will read. 

The Clerk read as follows: 

Salisbury, N.C., post-office : For site and continua- 
tion of building under present limit, $50,000. 

Mr. Blank. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike out the 
last word. Now, in view of the fact that this speech 
was evidently prepared in the office of the Attorney- 
General, I want to read what the Attorney-General 
thinks about the — 

Mr. Dash. Mr. Chairman, I ask that the amend- 
ment of the gentleman from Illinois may be reported. 

Mr. Doe. It is too late. 

Mr. Dash. The amendment has not yet been re- 
ported. 

Mr. Blank. I moved to strike out the last word, and 
I am making the motion in the usual way. 

Mr. Dash. What is the last word ? I ask that for the 
reason that the gentleman must confine himself to the 
subject of his amendment. 

Mr. Blank. I move to strike out the word "dollars." 

Mr. Dash. We cannot proceed in any other way. 

The Chairman. The gentleman from Illinois offers 
an amendment, which the Clerk will report. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

Page 9, line 11, strike out the word "dollars." 

Mr, Blank. And upon a motion like that to strike 



FROM THE HOUSE GALLERY 137 

out the word "dollars" it is perfectly proper to discuss 
the Attorney-General of the United States. I want to 
show what he thinks about himself. I read now from 
the first column on page 7561 of to-day's Record, 
referring to my criticisms of him : 

And what seems strange to me is that when at last 
we have a strong, able, vigorous, and thoroughly in 
earnest Attorney-General — 

Mr. Dash. I make the point of order that the gentle- 
man is not addressing himself to the amendment. I 
want to say to the gentleman that it is the desire of all 
Members of this House to conclude the reading of this 
bill, and it will be concluded inside of an hour ; and if 
he will wait until we conclude the reading of the bill, I 
will have no objection to his having ten or fifteen 
minutes in which to address the committee. 

Mr. Blank. But if the gentleman does not have 
objection, somebody else will. 

Mr. Dash. The gentleman is a Member of the House, 
and he ought not to try, in violation of the rules, to 
delay the further consideration of this bill, 

Mr. Blank. But this speech comes into the Record 
in violation of the rules. 

Mr. Doe. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent 
that, after the consideration of the bill shall have been 
completed in the Committee of the Whole, the gentle- 
man from Illinois (Mr. Blank) may have ten minutes. 

Mr. Dash. I will not object to that. 

Mr. Roe. I object. 



138 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

Mr. Blank. I insist on my right to the floor now. 

The Chairman. The gentleman from Minnesota 
makes the point of order that the gentleman from Illi- 
nois is not speaking in order to the amendment. The 
Chair will remind the gentleman from Illinois that 
general debate has been concluded upon this bill and 
that the universal rule in consideration of the bill by 
paragraphs Is that the debate must be confined to the 
bill. The Chair hopes the gentleman will confine him- 
self to the bill and that the gentleman will proceed in 
order. 

Mr. Blank. I have much respect for the presiding 
ofhcer and for his knowledge of the rules, yet I must 
call his attention to the fact that while the rule may be 
as the Chair states — and I do not promise to question 
that matter, because my colleague from Illinois, the 
chairman at the present time, knows much more about 
the rules than I do — but the Chair will agree with me 
that upon a motion to strike out the last word it is the 
invariable custom of the House to permit members to 
discuss matters that do not pertain to that paragraph. 

The Chairman. The Chair is under the impression 
that the gentleman from Illinois is in error in thinking 
that. Undoubtedly upon a motion to strike out the 
last word it is in order to discuss the merits of a para- 
graph. 

Mr. Blank. Then I move to strike out the paragraph. 

The Chairman. Undoubtedly on the motion to strike 
out the last word of a paragraph it is in order to discuss 



FROM THE HOUSE GALLERY 139 

the merits of the paragraph, but it Is not In order In 
the committee, on the reading of an appropriation bill, 
general debate having been concluded, to discuss ex- 
traneous matters not relating to the subject under 
consideration at the time. 

Mr. Blank. I hope the gentleman from Minnesota 
will not object to my speaking for ten minutes. The 
House will have sufficient time — 

Mr. Dash. I will say to the gentleman from Illinois 
I will not object to his proceeding for ten minutes If 
that will be the end of It. 

Mr. Blank. That will be the end for to-day. 

Mr. Dash. I have no objection. 

The Chairman. The gentleman from Illinois asks 
unanimous consent to speak for ten minutes to discuss 
the subject he has under consideration. Is there objec- 
tion ? 

Mr. Doe. I object. I know that the Representa- 
tive — 

The Chairman. The gentleman will be in order", he 
has objected. 

Mr. Blank. Then, Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous 
consent at the conclusion of the reading of the bill for 
ten minutes. 

The Chairman. The gentleman from Illinois asks 
unamlmous consent that at the conclusion of the read- 
ing of the bill he may have ten minutes — 

Mr. Doe. I object, until the gentleman from Cali- 
fornia is present — 



140 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

The Chairman. The gentleman from Tennessee will 
suspend — 

Mr. Blank. The gentleman from California is never 
here ; he is always away making political speeches for 
his party. 

The Chairman. The gentleman from Illinois asks 
unanimous consent upon the conclusion of the reading 
of the bill that he may have permission to address the 
House for ten minutes. 

Mr. Doe. Mr. Chairman, I object. 

Mr. Blank. I hope the gentleman will get in at the 
conclusion of the reading of the bill, because I shall 
ask for permission again. 

The Chairman. Without objection, the amendment 
is withdrawn, and the Clerk will read. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

San Angelo, Texas, post-office and court-house : For 
site and continuation of building under present limit, 
$25,000. 

Mr. Blank. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike out the 
last word. The gentleman from California is here. 
Now I ask for permission to proceed for ten minutes. 

The Chairman. The gentleman from Illinois asks 
unanimous consent that he may proceed for ten min- 
utes. 

Mr. Dash. I will ask the gentleman from Illinois if 
he will not qualify his request and make it at the con- 
clusion of the reading of the bill, which will be very 
soon now. 



FROM THE HOUSE GALLERY 141 

Mr. Blafik. I should prefer to go ahead now. 

Mr. Dash. I will say to the gentleman, of course It 
would be manifestly unfair for him to proceed for ten 
minutes and then deny the gentleman from California 
the same right, which would make twenty minutes, if 
made prior to the conclusion of the consideration of 
this bill ; but if the gentleman from Illinois will re- 
new his request of a moment ago that he may have 
ten minutes at the conclusion of the bill, I am satisfied 
there will be no objection. 

Mr. Blank. I will make the request for fifteen min- 
utes. 

The Chairman. The gentleman from Illinois asks 
unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the read- 
ing of the bill he may proceed to address the committee 
for fifteen minutes. Is there objection ? 

Mr. Doe. Mr. Chairman, I ask also that the Repre- 
sentative from California be allowed fifteen minutes. 

The Chairman. In that connection the gentleman 
from Tennessee asks that the request be modified so 
that the gentleman from Illinois may have fifteen min- 
utes, and the gentleman from California fifteen. Is 
there objection? (After a pause.) The Chair hears 
none and it is so ordered. 

All of this time, and the space occupied in reporting 
what was said, represents the efforts made by a Demo- 
cratic member of the House to attack the Attorney- 
General. The newspapers that reported the incident 



142 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

at all dismissed it in a few lines. I have quoted It 
in extenso here to show how a large part of the time of 
the House is occupied. 

One of the reasons why such a generally false im- 
pression of Congress is diffused throughout the country 
is the practice of the newspapers of printing only the 
interesting things that happen on the floor of the two 
chambers. When there is a good debate over some 
subject on which interest runs high, or when there are 
exciting clashes between the Democrats and the Re- 
publicans, columns of newspaper space are devoted 
to an account of what takes place. When the public 
outside of Washington reads of the House of Repre- 
sentatives it is always in connection with some scene 
or debate that is dramatic or important or picturesque 
and interesting. Therefore, when the average reader 
of newspapers comes to Washington on a visit and sits 
for an hour in the gallery and hears some such inter- 
change as has been printed above, he goes away 
puzzled and confused. 

When the guide said it was time to be going, if we 
wanted to climb to the dome or go in and see the 
Supreme Court for a little while, we told him we didn't 
think much of what we had seen and heard, but he told 
us it was not always like that. Sometimes, he said, all 
of the members were in their places on the floor, and 
there was plenty of excitement and high debate. We 
told him we wished that we might have seen something 
like that going on. The guide pointed across to the 



FROM THE HOUSE GALLERY 143 

press gallery above the Speaker's chair. "There Is 
just one sure way of knowing when something inter- 
esting is about to happen in the House," he said. 
"When you see the correspondents begin to come out 
of their own room back of their gallery and fill up their 
seats, then you may be sure that something is about to 
happen on the floor, and when you see them get up and 
leave the gallery, no matter how noisy it may seem on 
the floor, you may be sure that nothing else is going to 
happen for a while at any rate." 

We looked across to the press gallery, but there was 
only one young fellow in it, and he seemed to be draw- 
ing pictures on a piece of yellow paper. When he got 
up, yawned openly at the House of Representatives, 
and disappeared through a swinging door, we went 
away too. 



REMARKABLE MR. ADEE 

When the Mukden viceroy went to the station to meet 
Prince Tsalchen, on his way home to Peking from the 
coronation of King George at London, the Prince 
sobbed and wept because (i) England only gave him 
thirty-sixth place at the coronation, Immediately be- 
fore the "lost state" of Egypt ; (2) at the King's ban- 
quet, and again at the Foreign Office banquet, he was 
invited without his staff, though the envoys of Japan, 
Europe, and America brought their suites. Moreover, 
the language used toward him was cold ; and when he 
was decorated he alone (and not his suite) received an 
order. This, he complained, contrasted very unfavor- 
ably with that received at King Edward's coronation ; 
and even with that (less courteous) at King Edward's 
funeral. Consequently he kept his blinds down all the 
way in the Russian train, and would not see any one. 
He blamed the London Minister, Liu Yuh-LIn, for not 
having made it clear that he was an Imperial Prince. 

This never would have happened had Prince Tsal- 
chen been visiting us. There is a reason ; his name is 
Adee. 

If you were living at Washington and held an official 
position of sufficient rank and importance, it might 
easily happen that you would be called upon to enter- 
tain at dinner some evening an ambassador, a Korean 
prince, a pretender to the throne of Portugal, an associ- 



REMARKABLE MR. ADEE 145 

ate justice of the Supreme Court and a senator from 
Oklahoma who were not on speaking terms, an exiled 
Shah of Persia, the Secretary of the Chamber of Com- 
merce of Peoria, the Assistant Fish Commissioner, a 
retired admiral of the Navy, and the president-general 
of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Assum- 
ing that they were all sticklers (and this is a safe as- 
sumption) for precedence, how to seat them would be a 
problem, unless you knew and were in the good graces 
of one certain man. 

His name is Adee. 

Assume that you have been elected President of the 
United States, One of your duties would be to write 
letters of congratulation to, say, the Duke of Saxe- 
Coburg on the birth of a son, or you might have to con- 
done with the Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein on the 
death of her great-uncle, the Archduke of Something 
Else, or with the Emperor of Abyssinia on the sudden 
demise of his favorite wife. These are not little notes 
that may be "dashed off." There are certain fixed gra- 
dations of grief or happiness to be felt by rulers and po- 
tentates that have been carefully formulated through 
years of international correspondence. The President 
of the United States is much more grieved when the 
King of England . loses a cousin than he is when the 
Crown Prince of Siam loses a son. 

There is only one person among us who knows pre- 
cisely how much sorrier the Presicent is. His name is 
Adee. 



146 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

Alvey Augustus Adee, Second Assistant Secretar>^ of 
State, is a unique figure at Washington. He is the com- 
plete diplomatist. He is our only permanent official. 
He is the man who is declared not to exist, the indis- 
pensable person. Nobody who knows the Government 
at Washington can imagine the State Department 
without Mr. Adee. He knows what Secretary John 
Forsyth wrote to our Minister in London in the year 
1835 about the Canadian fisheries dispute. He knows 
what our Minister to Portugal reported to Secretary 
Marcy in the year 1854 about the state of that one- 
time monarchy. He knows the intrigues of the Court of 
China. He knew before the Shah of Persia knew it 
himself that he was to be deposed and exiled. He 
knows how much money the ex-Sultan of Turkey had 
and where he had it deposited. He could seat a dinner 
party in the Imperial Court at Peking without making 
a mistake, or lay out a bicycle tour through Germany 
with equal ease and precision, and his advice on either 
problem would be final and authoritative. 

Mr. Adee has completed thirty-five years of contin- 
uous service as Assistant Secretary of State, and forty- 
two years of continuous service in our diplomatic serv- 
ice. He was born in Astoria, New York, on November 
27, 1842. His first service in the diplomatic corps was 
as secretary of the American legation at Madrid, to 
which he was appointed on September 9, 1870, and, in 
the absence of the charg6 d'affaires, assumed the duties 
of that office. He remained at this post until 1877, 



REMARKABLE MR. ADEE 147 

wlien, because of ill-health, he returned to the United 
States. Shortly after his return he was appointed chief 
of the diplomatic bureau, which place he held until 
July 18, 1882, when President Arthur appointed him 
Third Assistant Secretary of State. President Cleve- 
land promoted Mr. Adee to Second Assistant Secretary 
of State on August 3, 1886. In this capacity he served 
under Presidents McKinley, Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, 
and Harding. Mr. Adee was appointed by President 
McKinley as Secretary of State ad interim to fill a 
vacancy, and he served in that capacity twelve days. 
He was also a witness to the signing of the Treaty of 
Paris, between the United States and Spain, and 
assumed the duties of Secretary of State in one of the 
most critical periods of the Chinese Boxer troubles. 

Many of the diplomatic notes which have established 
or readjusted our relations with other nations at criti- 
cal periods have been written by Mr. Adee and then 
signed and dispatched without alteration by the Secre- 
tary of State or the President. Mr. Adee is accredited 
with having invented the phrase "administrative 
entity" in Mr. Hay's famous Chinese note. All of the 
chancelleries of the world have tried to fathom and 
interpret this phrase, but without success. It seems to 
mean whatever the occasion requires it shall mean. 
Mr. Adee was the only man who could write a dis- 
patch which President Cleveland would sign without 
changing. 

This indispensable diplomatist speaks and writes 



148 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

fluently French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and all 
the rhetoricians might go to school to him in the use of 
the English language. As he employs it, it is either a 
filmy veil, an opaque cloud, or as luminous as light 
itself. Among Mr. Adee's minor functions was the 
writing of the annual Thanksgiving proclamation of 
the President, until the time of President Wilson, who 
wrote his own ; and the President's addresses of wel- 
come to foreign ambassadors and ministers when they 
come to the W^hite House to present their credentials. 
These the President either reads or speaks from mem- 
ory at the time of the presentation. During all of Mr. 
Adee's service as Assistant Secretary of State it is not 
of record that any Secretary of State, with the possible 
exception of Mr. Gresham, ever took any important 
action without having Mr. Adee prepare his case. 
Secretaries Hay and Root leaned upon him heavily. 

Mr. Adee's knowledge of form and precedent is 
genuinely believed to be all-embracing and letter- 
perfect. He is a singularly modest man and does his 
honest best to hide his light. All that is known of the 
value of his services and his really marvelous knowl- 
edge of diplomatic affairs becomes public property 
through the consistent and freely expressed praises of 
his superiors. So far as is known, he does not even read 
any of the things that are printed in praise of his work. 
Therefore his biographers of the press always feel at 
liberty to praise him as openly and unstintedly as they 
believe he deserves. 



REMARKABLE MR. ADEE 149 

Mr. Adee is supposed to be deaf. It seems to be a 
peculiar sort of deafness that enables him to hear what 
he cares to hear and to remain oblivious to things that 
annoy or bore him. One of his biographers calls atten- 
tion to another Infirmity which has stood him in 
equally good stead in his official life. That Is a temper 
worthy of his Scottish ancestry. This writer, who knew 
Mr. Adee for many years, noted of this temper : when 
it is calm, he is urbanity exemplified ; when it explodes, 
let those who stand nearest look out for themselves ! 
His underlings live in awe of this sort of demonstra- 
tion after having witnessed one, and It makes some of 
them more careful with their work ; while outsiders 
having frequent business with the department learn 
to avoid irritating importunities and other breaches of 
courtesy. 

Now and then it Is the innocent, animate or inani- 
mate, who suffer because the guilty are out of reach. 
Gossip used to have it that on one occasion Adee came 
back to his room after a very annoying interview In the 
Secretary's office, and began to scatter his books and 
papers this way and that, now slamming a bulky vol- 
ume upon the floor, now sweeping a pile of unsigned 
letters Into the waste-basket, and otherwise reducing 
the top of his writing-table to a plain of desolation. 

Toward the close of the outburst, a messenger en- 
tered, bearing the modest luncheon Adee had ordered 
before going out. Its most conspicuous factor was a 
large piece of pie. Reaching for that as he had reached 



150 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

for the laws, treaties, and correspondence which he 
had lately sent hurtling through space, Adee flung 
it straight at the messenger's head. The frightened 
servitor dodged, and the pie shot over him, plastering 
itself, in all its juicy exuberance, against the portrait of 
a distinguished Secretary of State of a past era which 
hung on the wall behind. What purports to be the 
mark of it is still pointed out, on the sly, to visitors. 
There was always an apocryphal odor about this story, 
and I should not wish to vouch for its truth. 

Secretary Hay once said : "Adee would make a good 
Bible. He can begin at the creation and tell me how 
everything was done in the past, and wind up by 
instructing me in my duties as head of this depart- 
ment. And the beauty of it is that I shan't go far 
astray if I follow him." 

Gaillard Hunt, who served in the State Department 
with Mr. Adee, tells this story : Some years ago a 
certain under-ofhcial in the State Department went to 
the Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, and asked him 
to appoint him to a vacancy among the assistant secre- 
taries. 

"Why," said Mr. Blaine, " it would not be doing you 
a kindness ; you would lose the place when the admin- 
istration changed." 

"Why so?" asked the applicant. "Look at Adee." 
"Well," said Mr. Blaine, slowly, "Adee is — Adee." 
Volumes could not have said more. He stands in a 
class by himself, without prototype or understudy, and 



REMARKABLE MR. ADEE 151 

when he shall pass off the stage a search will have to 
be made for some one now unknown to play his r51e. 
What Mr. Blaine himself thought of him was shown 
in a remark he once made to a visitor who happened 
to enter his room as Mr. Adee was leaving it. "There 
goes a great man," he said. 

Mr. Adee is the second man of his type who has had 
service in the State Department at Washington. His 
precursor was William Hunter, of Rhode Island, who 
secured a clerkship in the department in 1829, was 
promoted to be a chief of bureau in 1833, and became 
chief clerk in 1852, at a time when Daniel Webster was 
Secretary of State. Because there were no assistant 
secretaries in those days, Mr. Hunter was sometimes 
called upon to act as head of the department. The 
office of Second Assistant Secretary was expressly 
created for him in 1866. He held it for twenty years, 
until his death in 1886, when Mr. Adee succeeded him. 
Thus it comes about that in the entire history of 
our government only two men have served as Second 
Assistant Secretary of State. It would be, perhaps, 
impossible to find a parallel to that afforded by these 
two men in any other department of the Government. 

Mr. Adee is as prized and permanent a possession of 
the Federal Government as is the Great Seal of State 
which his department is charged with keeping. 



MELLON: A CERTAIN RICH MAN 

Daniel Webster played a sorry trick on all Secre- 
taries of the Treasury. He had to make a speech in 
1831 about Alexander Hamilton. In the accepted 
phrase, he spoke in part as follows : 

"Hamilton smote the rock of the national resources, 
and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He 
touched the dead corpse of the public credit and it 
sprang upon its feet." 

The fat was in the fire. Webster was a man of 

authority and the report of what he said got about. It 

got into McGufley's Fifth Reader and Hill's Rhetoric 

and the book from which we used to take our pieces to 

speak on Friday afternoons. In my book it was on the 

page after the piece that John Spear used to speak that 

begins : 

By Nebo's lonely mountain, 
On this side Jordan's wave, 
In a vale in the land of Moab — 

But the picture of Alexander Hamilton smiting the 
rock of the national resources and torrents of revenue 
gushing forth is one that I have carried in my mind 
since I was thirteen years old. It interested me. I re- 
membered it. And I am not the only one. That is 
what has made all the trouble. 

■ It seemed so easy. From that day to this there have 
been associations, individuals, corporations, partner- 




Copyright by Harris V Etvinij 

ANDREW W. MELLON, SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY 



MELLON 153 

ships, societies, clubs, what not, all animated with the 
single resolve of inducing the Secretary of the Treasury 
to smite the rock of the public resources while they 
stood by with pails to catch the abundant streams of 
revenue that gushed forth. "Look !" they have cried ; 
"see what Hamilton did. Why can't you be a great 
secretary such as he was ? Be a patriot and give the 
rock a good crack for us." Some of these men are In 
Congress, others are merely citizens on foot and tax- 
payers. They appear to have only the vaguest idea of 
where the money comes from ; there is plenty in the 
Treasury. 

At this juncture it is given to Mr. Andrew W. Mel- 
lon, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to explain to all 
these persons, who have been led astray by Daniel 
Webster, that he cannot get money from a rock. 

Francis Hackett has a new story of two Irishmen : 

"What's Michael doing now?" one Irishman asked 
another at a wayside inn. 

"Sure, he's gone to work for the Irish Agricultural 
Organization Society." 

"Go to God ! What does the like of him know about 
agriculture ?" 

"Well, he's after picking up this job with the Bee- 
keepers' Association. I think that's what he called it." 

' * And what is he doing with them, the poor fellow ? ' ' 

"Sure, he's going up and down Ireland with a 
stallion bee." 

Ever since he came to the Treasury Mr. Mellon has 



154 VVAISHNGTON CLOSE-UPS 

been explaining to Congress, to the bankers, and to the 
public that the Government has no stallion dollar ; 
that it doesn't breed money ; that it has no way of 
getting money except by taking it from the earnings of 
those of us who have gainful occupations. Mr. Mellon 
may have a stallion dollar or two working for him 
somewhere, for he is fabulously rich. He knows about 
money. He respects it. He doesn't like to see it 
chucked about. He hadn't been in the Treasury a 
week before he was writing like this in a circular letter 
to bankers :"... the situation calls for the utmost 

economy. The Nation cannot afford extravagance 

The people generally must become more interested in 
saving the Government's money than in spending 
it...." 

At the end of April he was writing to the Chairman 
of the Ways and Means Committee of the House: 
"The Nation cannot continue to spend at this shock- 
ing rate. . . .The burden is unbearable. This is no time 
for extravagance or for entering upon new fields of 
expenditure. The Nation cannot afford wasteful or 
reckless expenditure.. . .Expenditures should not even 
be permitted to continue at the present rate." Mr. 
Mellon was very much in earnest, and when he talks 
about money it behooves all and sundry to stop, look, 
and listen, for money is his specialty. He has spent his 
whole life in amassing and multiplying and guarding 
it. He is supposed to be runner-up to John D. in the 
Open Money-Getting Championship, but of that I 



MELLON 155 

know nothing. I am asking you to consider him with 
me now in his new and pubHc aspect as Secretary of the 
Treasury, and regard his fabulous wealth only as a 
background 

It may very well turn out that Mr. Mellon will have 
the largest opportunity and the most onerous and re- 
sponsible public service of any of the men Mr. Harding 
invited to Washington to share under his direction in 
the conduct of national affairs. For the next half- 
dozen years, and probably for a longer period, the 
Government finances will need all the skill, all the 
intelligence, and all the vision that can be commanded. 
The Treasury, as one of the results of the Great War, 
finds itself in a novel position. It has commitments 
and engagements and relations at home and abroad 
that it has not faced before. It is prudent and fitting 
to inquire and report about Mr. Mellon. He is the 
newest of newcomers in public life. What sort is he ; 
The data at this juncture is incomplete, but enough is 
at hand to allow for a provisional estimate and impres- 
sion. 

At first sight he gives no slight indication of his 
proved qualities. He looks like a tired double-entry 
bookkeeper who is afraid of losing his job. He gives the 
instant impression of being worn and tired, tired, tired. 
He is slight and frail. He sits in a chair utterly re- 
laxed. He wears dark, sober clothes, a black tie, his 
coat always buttoned, and in these days, when even 
the office boys sport silk, his socks are black, cotton 



156 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

lisle, and not pulled up as sharply as they might be. I 
don't mean to give the impression that he isn't neat in 
his attire ; on the contrary, he complies so closely and 
rigidly to the standards of a well-dressed man that it 
requires a distinct effort of attention and memory to 
remember anything about his personal appearance. 
Sometimes in his ofhce he smokes small black paper 
cigarettes. When they go out, he relights them and 
smokes them right down to the end. Not an eighth of 
an inch is wasted. He doesn't smoke lightly, casually, 
unconsciously, but precisely, carefully, consciously, as 
a man computing interest on $87.76 for two months 
and eight days at 4! per cent per annum. 

Mr. Mellon looks as if he didn't know what fun was, 
and I don't believe he does. Unless I am much mis- 
taken, the job of being Secretary of the Treasury 
weighs on him ; oppresses him. I think he takes all 
business seriously, as seriously as some of those men, 
who are as intent as trained bird dogs on their game, 
take golf. He is acutely conscious of all he has to do. 
He does not take it easily. Apparently he has handled 
other people's money so long that it has made him 
super-conscientious. Perhaps it is only natural for a 
man who has so much money to regard its manage- 
ment and control with so much gravity and concern. 

I should say that Mr. Mellon was not an outgiving 
person. When he shakes hands he gives you only the 
tips of his fingers. He is so quiet, so reticent, so re- 
served as to give the impression of being almost in- 



MELLON 157 

articulate. This effect is heightened by his diffidence 
of manner and his hesitant manner of speech. But he 
can't be timid. No man can hve the competitive life he 
has lived in Pittsburgh, and what the railroad people 
call the Ohio River gateways, and be timid. But he is 
diffident and has an odd little hesitation in his speech ; 
and he does love the quiet ways. 

Thanks to the foresight and forethought of one of 
Mr. Mellon's predecessors in the Treasury, who was 
also a quiet man, his office has a private entrance and 
exit. He can come into it and leave it by a private 
elevator without being seen. When he goes to Cabinet 
meetings, he has only to come down in his own elevator 
to the street level and nip across the narrow roadway 
between the Treasury and the White House. He is not 
in the open a minute before he can dart in the east 
portico ; then he has only to follow the long passage 
through the east extension under the main house and 
through the west extension or wing, past the latticed 
enclosures where the White House laundry hangs, to 
the back porch of the executive offices. Through the 
open doorway, and he steps almost straight into the 
Cabinet room, which is hidden by a screen. In the 
entire journey he is only in exposed or open territory 
during the brief minute that he crosses the street. For 
the rest of it he is in his own or Administration com- 
munication trenches. 

I remember his first Cabinet meeting. All the corre- 
spondents were waiting in the anterooms and passages 



158 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

of the executive offices to see Mr. Harding after the 
Cabinet meeting. When the meeting broke up, Mr. 
Mellon came out with the others and ran into the 
crowd. He plainly didn't know what to make of it. 
He didn't know what it was all about. He had never 
seen such a gathering outside of any directors' meeting 
he had ever attended. He didn't know any of the 
correspondents. None of them knew him. The other 
Cabinet men were greeted and surrounded by little 
knots of men. Mr. Mellon looked as if he wanted to 
slip away — and he did. He isn't used to reporters 
or any method or channel or form of publicity. He is 
not a public man. He is as private as a toothbrush. 
He is without any sort of public experience. 

From what one hears, he is just as uncommunicative 
in the Cabinet room as he is outside. Mr. Harding, 
who is as friendly as an Elk, I suspect finds some 
difficulty in establishing a close contact with his 
Secretary of the Treasury. I think I am right in saying 
that he had never seen Mr. Mellon until he invited 
him, at Mr. Knox's suggestion, to come to Marion. I 
have heard only one story about him in the Cabinet 
room. 

It appears that one day the Cabinet had under dis- 
cussion what should be done with one of the great 
war industries plants. The immediate problem was 
whether twelve or fifteen millions should be spent in 
putting it in condition or whether it should be aban- 
doned and salvaged. One after another of the men 



MELLON 159 

around the table gave his judgment and opinion. Mr, 
Mellon sat quiet. Presently the President, at the head 
of the table, turned toward him and said : 

"But we haven't heard from the Secretary of the 
Treasury. What does he think about this proposal ? I 
should like to have his views." 

Mr. Mellon was hesitant. Then he spoke up in his 
low, quiet, dry voice. The matter was not exactly in 
his department ; he had not given the problem any 
study ; he was not familiar with all the conditions and 
the full situation ; it was a question of some impor- 
tance ; he did not wish to be understood as giving his 
final opinion unless he had opportunity to go into the 
whole matter more fully, but he thought he could 
indicate possibly what his final judgment might be, if 
allowed to tell what he had done in a somewhat similar 
and personal case. He owned a war plant that stood 
him about fifteen or sixteen millions, and just the other 
day the question had come up whether to spend that 
much more money on it or to wipe it off. " I told 'em to 
scrap it," concluded Mr. Mellon. 

"Well, sir," said the man who was telling the story, 
"the discussion in the Cabinet ended right there. The 
Cabinet felt that if Mr. Mellon could afTord to scrap 
his plant the United States Government could afford 
to follow the same course. When the Secretary of the 
Treasury does participate in a discussion he usually 
nails it down." 

Mr. Mellon will take care of our money. That is 



i6o WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

what he has done all his life. It is a tiring job and takes 
its toll of a man. You know even on the most casual 
contact that he Is cautious and careful and prudent 
and wary beyond all words. 

He gives away oodles and heaps of his own money. 
His benefactions and charities run Into Immense sums, 
but you somehow know that he never wasted a dime. 
He is acquisitive. He knows how to manage, conserve, 
and breed money. I suspect that most of his dollars 
are stallion dollars and earn their keep. He is a de- 
veloper and a builder. He has an oil business nearly as 
big as the Standard's. He is possibly the chief figure In 
the steel car business. He brought the aluminum in- 
dustry In this country to Its present pitch. 

I do not choose to make the absurd statement at 
this late day that he Is an exceptionally able man. 
That Is wholly proven, though you might never sus- 
pect It at the first or even second or third meeting. If 
he is anything of an economist or statesman, if he has a 
wide vision, and understanding, In addition to his 
capacity for acquisition, and his qualities as a finan- 
cier and banker, then he too may become a great 
Secretary of the Treasury like Alexander Hamilton 
and cause abundant streams of revenue to gush forth. 
If he does, the Republican Party will never forget him. 
Streams of revenue is its whole present quest. 



Mccormick : the young vitamine 

It Is a great comfort to me that nobody seems to know 
precisely what a vitamine is. I don't know either, but 
I feared that somebody interested in that sort of thing 
might have isolated one, studied its habits, and written 
its life history. In such a case it would be just my luck 
to have a vitamine prove wholly unlike what I think 
it to be. Then I would be under the necessity of with- 
drawing it as I now apply it as a term of description to 
Senator Medill McCormick. And I wouldn't like to do 
that, because he and the vitamine seem to me play- 
mates and the complements of one another. 

The vitamine, I take it. Is chiefly noted for a certain 
Inherent lively quality. All the people I have asked 
about It have agreed that "it is something like elec- 
tricity." It resides in yeast cakes. In beans, and other 
potent food stuffs. It Is also something like Kipling's 
Fuzzy-wuzzy In that it is all hot sand and ginger when 
alive, and generally shamming when It's dead. It 
radiates pep and energy and vitality. It Is a sure cure 
for inhibitions and inferiority complexes. It raises 
morale. In fine. It Is just what the doctor ordered, or, 
as they used to say In France, the stuff to give the 
troops. 

Now, If, In truth, this is an accurate description of 
vitamlnes, I am amply justified In applying the term 
to Mr. McCormick. For all of the qualities that have 



i62 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

been ascribed to vitamlnes are his in ample quantity 
and to a major degree. He is a live spark. Mr. Dooley 
said that when Beveridge entered the Senate he 
thereby reduced the average age of that body to 
ninety-seven years. Mr. McCormick's entrance has 
increased the energy content by one hundred per cent. 
He goes through life with his foot always on the accel- 
erator and can jump from three miles an hour to sixty 
in the length of his own shadow. 

The chief interesting thing about any power plant or 
body of stored energy is what use will be made of it. 
How will it be directed ; to what end will it be applied ? 
Any accumulation of power is a matter of public 
interest if not of public concern. It is for this reason 
among others that I venture to bring Medill McCor- 
mick forward for consideration and examination. Now 
that he is a public man with what is likely to be a long 
political future ahead of him, it concerns us to know 
what he will make of himself. 

Most men come to the Senate as the capstone of 
their political career. McCormick as a Senator is only 
at the threshold of his. His real service lies in front of 
him. His present situation is not a reward for things 
done, but an incentive to accomplishment. My pleas- 
ant and self-imposed task is not to submit to you a 
record of the past, but the beginning of a new enter- 
prise. A race once run is history, but a race beginning 
is news. It is also a betting proposition. And it creates, 
by the same token, an atmosphere of lively expectation. 




Copyright by Harris ic Ewing 

SENATOR MEDILL McCORMICK 



Mccormick 163 

Medill McCormick comes by his vitamines natu- 
rally enough by inheritance. He is Scotch- Irish to begin 
with, and that is a combination of bloods that is yet to 
be surpassed among the sons of men. In the proper 
admixture it gives its happy possessor tenacity and fire 
and vivacity, a cool daring and a quick willingness 
to do anything at least once. To the hardy and canny 
qualities of the Scotch they add the Irish gayety, and 
quickness of mind and imagination. When their car- 
buretor is so adjusted as to give them the proper 
mixture they are good for as many miles per gallon as 
any make of man we have produced. 

More specifically, the Illinois Senator is descended 
on his father's side from one of the three McCormick 
brothers who came to this country and eventually 
founded the agricultural implement business that 
became the basis of the International Harvester Com- 
pany. His mother was a daughter of Joseph Medill, the 
great editor. So that on both sides he comes of men of 
force and action, pioneers in their fields, men of imagi- 
nation and daring. He has inherited certain of their 
qualities, and he has only just begun in recent years to 
make an orderly, constructive use of them. They have 
brought him to the Senate at an early age (born 1877), 
and after the briefest of political careers. His whole 
experience as an active participant in politics is com- 
prehended in the period since 191 2. 

He really began as a Progressive. He stood at Arma- 
geddon and after that debacle came back into the 



i64 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

Republican ranks. He effected that transformation 
with an ease and celerity and a lightness of movement 
that was not exceeded by any and equaled by few. He 
demonstrated in the transaction a real political skill 
and facility. He did not come back to his former 
associates humbly and hat In hand ; nor did he come 
back with clamor, and truculently. He proved anew 
that movement can be quicker than the eye. Simply 
one day he was a Progressive, and when he next became 
audible and visible he was a Republican in good and 
regular standing. 

Many others traveled this road after the 191 2 elec- 
tion, but for the most part their return journey was as 
conspicuous as that of the men who came back from 
Moscow with Napoleon. They acquired what may be 
called certain vocational stigmata and were easily 
identified as ex-Progressives. Bainbridge Colby is a 
notable case in point, because he, instead of coming 
back to his starting-point, branched off and became 
a Democrat, thereby winning his durable and lasting 
sobriquet as. The Loyal Chameleon. But his case was 
exceptional and conspicuous. 

Mr. McCormick's change was effected in the Illinois 
legislature, in which he served successive terms, first 
as a Progressive and then as a Republican. He came 
straight on from there to Washington as a Congress- 
man at large from his State and after a brief experience 
in the House was translated to the Senate. 

In his present environment he has come ahead in the 



Mccormick 165 

Senate Republican organization. He is a member of 
the Foreign Relations Committee, which is counted a 
reward even after long service. Senator Cullom, the last 
Illinois Senator who sat on it, was in the chamber 
twelve years before the distinction came to him. Mr. 
McCormick's early arrival is the most conspicuous 
mark by which one can judge his progress in the Senate. 

His present preoccupation is with foreign affairs. 
He has traveled widely and over a period of years that 
long antedated his entrance into politics. He went to 
Europe after the 1920 election and before the inaugura- 
tion of Mr. Harding, and met and talked with the chief 
political and public figures in England, France, Italy, 
Austria, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, and Germany. Mr. 
Harding summoned him to Florida to go over with 
him the information he had acquired. To what extent 
he colored or influenced the President's mind I do 
not pretend to know. But he had an opportunity to 
do both. 

I cite this instance here to indicate his sense of news 
and news values, which so far as my knowledge runs, 
no other Senator has. He has an instinct for being on 
the spot where things are happening ; the center of 
interest. That implies a driving force within and a 
quick imaginative grasp of a situation while it is form- 
ing and before it has crystallized. It indicates an eager 
and alert mind. 

These qualities Mr. McCormick has proved. What 
he has yet to prove is more important to us in his 



i66 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

capacity as a United States Senator. He must show 
stability, soundness of judgment, capacity for thinking 
a problem through, a disinterestedness in public service 
for the work's sake. He must base himself firmly and 
solidly if he is to achieve anything enduring. He is in 
his first term in the Senate. He has come on with a 
marvelous rapidity. He has speed, and a capacity for 
quick action, and energy. His quick rise has proved 
that he can make a successful appeal to voters. He has 
steadied and controlled and used to some purpose since 
1912 his great store of energy — his vitamines, as I 
have chosen to call them. But not yet has he mellowed 
or ripened. When he does that we shall know more 
about him. By their fruits ye shall know them, but I 
take it that means fruits in their maturity. 

In his present stage of development Mr. McCormick 
lacks suavity ; he is not finally tempered or seasoned. 
His methods are direct and swift. He is liked or dis- 
liked with vehemence. He does not tread a cautious 
or politic course in his daily relationships. He does 
not fear to offend. He was one of the " irreconcilables " 
on the League of Nations. He sometimes irritates and 
vexes slower and more cautious minds by his flashes 
and his ardent, lively temperament. He is not notably 
reverential and respectful to his elders and equals. I 
have known them to resent that. 

Yet unless I mistake him he is of the type that will 
not be denied. He is one of the new Senators who has 
made his name known outside of the Senate. He has 



Mccormick 167 

given Illinois a significance and an importance in the 
councils of the Senate that she has not enjoyed since 
Senator Cullom died after long and continuous service. 
Continued service is one of the requisites of effective- 
ness in the Senate. Whether Mr. McCormick will 
have that is dependent upon the people of Illinois who 
vote. For they after all are the final judges of the 
qualities and capacities he discloses in their service. 

I can only number myself among the detached on- 
lookers who would like to see him given a further 
opportunity to develop his possibilities. The experi- 
ment to this juncture has been interesting and justi- 
fied. I want to know all there is to know about vita- 
mines. 



HUGHES: A MAN OF SUBSTANCE 

Charles Evans Hughes is an ill man to write about. 
He is as destitute of graces, of lights and shades, of 
frailties and foibles, of idiosyncrasies and little personal 
eccentricities, of the "human interest" touch, as any 
man in public life. It will be easy enough to write his 
obituary, for his career and his achievements will lend 
themselves to eulogy. He has a long and fine record of 
things done in the public interest to be recited. He has 
in plentiful measure the outstanding virtues of sobri- 
ety, steadfastness, trustworthiness, honesty, industry, 
intelligence, capacity, application, and the will to suc- 
ceed. He has been as successful in private life as in 
politics. He has in him the qualities that make for 
success in whatever he undertakes — character, an 
educated, trained mind, shrewdness, and common 
sense. 

But what good is all that to me? I don't want to 
write his epitaph, but to try to picture the man as he is 
in his daily walk as Secretary of State, as taxpayer, as 
a citizen living at 1529 Eighteenth Street N.W., sub- 
ject to colds in the head, fits of temper, and other com- 
mon frailties and weaknesses of mankind. It's not 
easy to take hold of him. He doesn't offer any invit- 
ing approach. 

I had an appointment with him the other day, and 
when I arrived at his office he had just gone out to 



HUGHES 169 

lunch. The Secretary was sorry, but he had been de- 
layed in getting away for his luncheon and would I 
please wait until he returned. 

"And how long will that be?" 

''Nineteen minutes." 

"Why not make it twenty and give him time to 
digest it?" I asked facetiously, hoping possibly to 
brighten momentarily the serious and precise young 
functionary. 

"Because the Secretary takes only nineteen minutes 
for lunch," replied the grave-faced youth. 

Now, what can you do with a man like that ? I ask 
you. 

For so substantial and unromantic a figure Mr. 
Hughes has been very changeable. He has had, at 
least, three distinct phases since he came into public 
view. First, as champion of the public welfare, gas 
and insurance investigator. Governor of New York, 
and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Second, 
as candidate for the presidency. And now the third 
and present phase as Secretary of State. While retain- 
ing the same basic substance and qualities, he had his 
three periods or manners : the early, the middle, and 
the late. 

I take it from Plutarch, by way of the admirable and 
never sufficiently to be commended Bartlett, that 
Antiphanes said merrily, that in a certain city the cold 
was so intense that words were congealed as soon as 
spoken, but that after some time they thawed and 



I70 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

became audible ; so that the words spoken in winter 
were articulated next summer. 

There must be something in the story, for look at 
Mr. Hughes. Consider what he used to be and see 
how he has thawed, so that now he not only gives out 
light but warmth. I venture to exhibit him as an ex- 
ception to the rule that the metaphorical leopard can- 
not change his figurative or rhetorical spots. It is an 
extraordinary case. When Mr. Hughes first emerged 
and became a figure of public observation and com- 
ment 

The breaking waves dashed high 

On a stern and rockbound coast. 

Mr. Hughes seemed caught in the ice-cap. He was a 
stiff, unyielding figure, and on the rare occasions when 
he tried to unbend he almost audibly creaked. A frosty 
man, a just man, and clearly and discernibly an able 
man, he was called the "Charles the Baptist," or "an 
animated feather duster," or "a Viking in a frock 
coat." With it all he inspired public confidence and 
public trust. In those early days he was the Black 
Knight in brazen armor who went about slaying mon- 
sters and dragons. Except that he didn't wear brazen 
armor, but a long black Prince Albert coat, and 
trousers that were too long. (Why will they wear 
their trousers in folds about their ankles when they 
are earnest and seeking and uplifting ? It connotes a 
state of mind and a stage of political development. 
It's almost a sure sign. The stronger they are on the 



HUGHES 171 

moral issue, the longer the trousers. It is an irrele- 
vant social and sartorial phenomenon I have observed 
for years, and it has rarely failed.) 

And this attire is just as uncomfortable and almost 
as impenetrable as brass armor. In those early days 
Mr. Hughes wore also a great, black, spade beard 
parted along the 90th meridian and combed due east 
and due west. His hat was silk and tall and black and 
shiny. He didn't take it off when he addressed the 
populace. He had a trick of standing back flat on his 
heels. This made his shoes turn up at the toes so that 
from the ball of the foot forward the soles did not 
touch the ground. He made an impressive figure. In 
this posture and in this attire I used to see him at the 
up-state county fairs in New York rousing the yeo- 
manry. He could do it, too. That was the unexpected 
and the surprising thing. 

He was and is a powerful exhorter. He has clarity 
of mind and clarity and lucidity of expression. He 
brought a high character and a strong, cleanly work- 
ing mind to bear on fundamental questions. The State 
politicians of that time were no match for him. They 
soon knew it. They guyed his whiskers and built up 
the legend that he lived on an ice-peak, but it got them 
nowhere. 

Mr. Hughes made a fight for a direct primary, and 
got it. He urged a Public Service Commission, and 
one was established. He opposed a two-cent-a-mile 
rate on the railroads, and it was not imposed. He 



172 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

opposed race-track betting, and it was stopped, and 
6213 sheet- writers (or thereabouts) lost their jobs that 
kept them out in the open air and had to go to work in 
the frowsty pool-rooms. The betting at the tracks was 
stopped, but not for long. The whole episode proved 
to be a striking example of how "reforms," brought 
about under high public feeling and under the driving 
force of a strong leadership, are by mutual easement 
and accommodation later ameliorated and modified 
to suit the public demand. 

The situation and the procedure was this when Mr. 
Hughes became convinced that race-track betting 
was a bad thing for the citizens of New York. The 
betting ring was an open place openly arrived at. 
The bookmakers had their stands and displayed a 
blackboard or large chart on which the odds were 
posted. The bettors handed up their money and 
received a ticket on which was scrawled the name of 
the horse they backed, the odds and the amount bet. 
The transaction was recorded by the sheet-writer. 

Mr. Hughes succeeded in stopping that. It was 
made illegal. In so doing the livelihood of some, and 
the diversion and excitement of many others, was 
abruptly terminated, so, after Mr. Hughes was 
translated from the governorship to the Supreme 
Bench, acute and subtle minds were brought to bear 
to see if something could be done about it. It all 
worked out in the end to the conclusion that the 
blight, the curse, the evil of race-track betting lay in 



HUGHES 173 

recording the transaction. So now the whole business 
is carried on with a sort of nominal furtiveness. The 
bookmakers became "oralists." They do not openly 
record the wagers they make. They give the bettor 
no written evidence of the sum he has laid. The 
circumstance that it is an oral transaction seems to 
make all the difference. 

It may be that in time the national prohibition act 
will work out in some such like fashion. Perhaps if 
we stopped calling it "hooch," and spoke consistently 
instead of "medicinal bitters," the opening to a way 
might be found. 

However, that is all aside from the point. My 
present disposition is confined within the narrow 
limits of displaying a concrete example of Mr. 
Hughes's power of personality and his ability while 
governor to sway the opinions and actions of masses 
of people who were not concerned one way or the 
other until he made them concerned. That the effect 
was not lasting does not invalidate the performance. 
The same thing has happened before and since. The 
great achievement of Mr. Wilson's administration as 
Governor of New Jersey was the enactment of the 
Seven Sisters Bills, as they were called. In their day 
they were as famous as the Seven Sutherland Sisters 
and as well advertised. And now they are dead and 
nobody knows where they are burled. The wild clem- 
atis and the tangled eglantine grow over their graves. 
They died of neglect and malnutrition when their 



174 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

papa went away to Washington on other business and 
left them behind with strangers who did not care. 

In those days of his first emergence and participa- 
tion In poUtlcs Mr. Hughes made himself a national 
figure. His career and his performances In his first 
term as governor touched the imagination of the 
interior. The people wanted to see him and hear 
him. When Mr. Taft ran for President in 1908, 
Governor Hughes was his most effective campaign 
speaker. He roused more enthusiasm than the candi- 
date himself. I traveled with both of them that year. 

Mr. Hughes made a tremendous impression. He 
proved himself a true spell-binder. He made rear 
platform speeches that were models. He sized up a 
crowd instantly. He never failed to know whether 
the assemblage in train sheds, by little way stations, 
at junction points. In railroad yards — wherever his 
train stopped — were farmers, railway workers, fac- 
tory hands, or just an agglomerate of citizens on foot. 
He knew what to say to each special audience. He 
lost no time getting under way. He caught and held 
their attention with his first sentence. Bryan could 
not have done It better. There is no higher standard. 
Mr. Hughes talked to them as a statesman, but his 
divination, his adaptability, his sure instinct for the 
right approach were those of an experienced politician. 

And then, while at the very top of his stride, while 
he was being widely talked about as a presidential 
possibility, when his political career seemed assured, 



HUGHES 175 

Mr. Hughes accepted Mr. Taft s tender of a place on 
the Supreme Bench and bade farewell to politics. 
So bright seemed his political prospects that the step 
was spoken of as a retirement, I know that men 
interested in public affairs in New York wrote to Mr. 
Hughes and chided him for what they looked upon as 
his desertion. I think It rather irritated Mr. Hughes 
that his translation to the bench should have been 
taken as something analogous to taking the vows and 
becoming a cloistered monk. At any rate, there he 
was and apparently settled for life. It was made 
pretty plain that Mr. Hughes had definitely aban- 
doned politics and would give the remainder of his 
working days to interpreting the law and the consti- 
tution. 

Now I come to the most curious and inexplicable 
phase of the Hughes public career. I wish I knew 
more about it. Something happened to him while he 
was on the bench. He suffered a sea-change. If I 
knew what went on deep down in his mind in those 
days, I should feel that I had penetrated to what the 
biographers like to call the "real" Hughes. But I 
can only tell what I know. Mr. Hughes went on the 
Supreme Court in October, 19 10. Before the national 
conventions of 19 12 came round, the Republican 
Party was hopelessly split by the Progressive seces- 
sion. This became a fact at Chicago in June. 

A great many people turned to Mr. Hughes as a 
possible candidate who could harmonize and compose 



176 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

the party differences. He was approached in the 
early spring of 191 2 by men who inquired whether he 
would be a candidate. He made it plain that he 
would not. He authorized Rabbi Stephen Wise and 
others to make it clear that under no circumstances 
could his name be used. It was said for him that 
should the convention nominate him against his will 
he would decline the nomination, and the convention 
would have its work to do all over again. 

His attitude was not based on any temporary ground 
of expediency or the momentary exigencies of poli- 
tics, or any personal feelings for Mr. Taft who 
had appointed him to the bench. It was based on 
fundamentals, the impropriety, the bad example of a 
Justice of the Supreme Court returning to active 
politics. I think every one who talked with Mr. 
Hughes at that time came away with the vividly im- 
pressed belief that here was a strong, sound man with 
matured, reasoned convictions who could not be 
shaken or tempted, a man who was capable of forming 
clear judgments and who had come to the final con- 
clusion that a Justice of the Supreme Court could 
not become a candidate or accept political office ; 
that by the mere fact of going on the bench he had 
given an unspoken pledge to stay there ; that such 
was the only possible course ; that it was due the 
great profession of the law, due the bench, due all 
the people who accepted the Supreme Court as 
final arbiter and as one national institution abso- 



HUGHES 177 

lutely isolated from the passions and the taint of 
politics. That was the impression. Then what 
happened ? 

In 191 6 Mr. Hughes was the candidate of his party 
for the presidency. His foot had sHpped. Explain 
it who can. What led him to change his mind? 
What were his mental processes ? Who tempted him 
and with what arguments? What reasons did he 
adduce to himself? Why did he do it? I don't 
know. I wish I did. It was the oddest thing Mr. 
Hughes ever did. It was unlike him. It was a bad 
skid and I think he has paid for it. 

I was not in the country during the 191 6 campaign, 
but the general expert testimony seems to be that Mr. 
Hughes was not himself as a candidate. Something 
seemed to have happened to him. He appeared to 
have been suffering under a variety of inhibitions 
and complexes. He was far from hitting on all six 
in the old free way. After the election I was in 
several of the Western States and on the Coast. I 
was told everywhere: "If Mr. Hughes had not come 
out here, we could have carried the State for him. 
He would have been elected." This was particularly 
true in California, and I am persuaded from my own 
inquiries on the spot that it was a just and accurate 
conclusion. 

And now, after the interlude since 191 6 in the 
practice of the law, Mr, Hughes is Secretary of State, 
high in the confidence and the favor of Mr. Harding, 



178 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

sharing with Mr. Hoover the reputation of being one 
of the two "strong men" of the administration, and 
happier and sunnier and warmer and more responsive 
than any one has ever seen him. 

It is an entirely new Hughes. The big, black, 
formidable spade beard is gone, and there is now a 
soft, white, rounded one, a mere buttonhole bouquet 
of a beard in place of the old impenetrable privet 
hedge. Gone, too, is the old long-tailed coat and the 
high shiny black hat. He is a great surprise to those 
persons who believed that he was ice-bound eight 
months in the year. As a matter of record Mr. 
Hughes is more friendly and flexible and easy in his 
demeanor than he has ever shown himself before. 

He will tell the world that he likes his job. He 
fairly revels in it, and is as enthusiastic as the little 
boys before Christmas who believe in Santa Claus. 
His enthusiasm is contagious. It has affected the 
newspaper correspondents who regularly attend his 
daily "conferences," as they are called. They did a 
thing the other day that has never happened before 
in this town. The usual exchange of questions and 
answers having come to an end, Mr. Hughes left the 
room and returned to his office. Within a minute 
or two he came bursting back all aglow and with a 
paper in his hand. It was a dispatch he had found on 
his desk. It was news ; good news, and Mr. Hughes, 
all bubbling, read it out loud to the assembly. 

They cheered him. They actually warmly and 



HUGHES 179 

spontaneously applauded the pertormance. It was 
obviously so unpremeditated, so genuine, and so 
took them all in as interested participants, so made 
them a part of the enterprise, that they gave him a 
hand for his quick recognition of their interest and 
their point of view. 

Whether Mr. Hughes will be a great Secretary of 
State I won't venture to guess. He has made a good 
start. He is at his ease and functioning without 
friction. He seems to be freed of his late inhibitions, 
and certainly he appears extraordinarily happy and 
content. It has been so long since there has been 
a real Secretary of State in Washington that Mr. 
Hughes looms up like another Pike's Peak, but it is 
much too early to form a judgment. About even so 
steadfast a man as Mr. Hughes, you never can tell. 
He is doing all that lies in his power to retrieve the 
prestige that he lost in his essay toward the presi- 
dency, and he is acquiring a great stock of public 
good- will. And he has got what J. Pierpont Morgan 
said was the best security for the loan of a million 
dollars — character. 



LODGE: THE VERY BEST BUTTER 

To be a Cabot among us is to have come over with the 
Conqueror. It is only fair. There is even a sort of 
poetic justice in it. The first of the line was John or 
Zuan Cabot, an Italian. He didn't have much luck. 
He was the first of the early tide of immigrants to 
reach the mainland of North America. He didn't 
know it. He thought it was an island, or, at any rate, 
the King who sent him did. He struck straight across 
the western ocean from Bristol with every chance in 
the world of landing at Boston, which would have been 
wonderful good fortune for everybody concerned. 
Instead, by a perverse fate, he touched on the coast of 
Labrador. 

"This Venetian of ours who went in search of new 
islands is returned," wrote an Italian in London to his 
brother at home ; "his name is Zuan Cabot, and they 
all call him the Great Admiral. Vast honor is paid him, 
and he dresses in silk. These English run after him 
like mad people." The account book of Henry VII 
contains the precise entry: "To hym that found the 
new isle io£." Say, $35-50 at this day's rate of ex- 
change, but, of course, as we are so often told, money 
went further in those days. 

But interest in Cabot and his voyage soon died out. 




(-'opyright by Harris If Ewing 

SENATOR HENRY CABOT LODGE 



LODGE i8i 

It only goes to show that, even in those early, simple 
days, the public was fickle. It doesn't always recog- 
nize true merit, or, recognizing it for a moment, 
doesn't cling to it and perpetually sing its praises. 
And so it came about that this mainland of ours which 
Zuan Cabot was the first to touch was named "by an 
obscure German professor in a French college, after 
an Italian navigator in the service of the King of 
Portugal." Cabot's name is not connected with or 
given to any town, river, state, or mountain in the 
New World. 

For us and our children there is only that perishable 
monument, Henry Cabot Lodge, to preserve and keep 
alive the name. He is the only Cabot we know. There 
may be others, but we plain people of the hills and 
valleys do not know them. Our Cabot is Henry 
Cabot. So far as we are concerned, he is the nationally 
advertised national product and all others are imita- 
tions. We ask for "the scholar In politics" and take 
no substitutes. The genuine cannot be mistaken. It 
cools the blood and is a sovereign antidote in cases of 
Democracy, curing even the most virulent cases of 
Wilsonism, in one to five days. Take a little acid for 
thy humor's sake. 

1 don't know whether or not Henry Cabot Lodge is 
a kinsman and descendant of Zuan Cabot. It doesn't 
really matter. They are spiritually akin, at any rate, 
have had somewhat the same experience, and Mr. 
Lodge has kept the Cabot name a bright beacon light 



i82 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

in a hurried world given to forgetfulness of the brave 
names of old. I do not want Cabot Lodge forgotten as 
Zuan Cabot has been. 

I wonder if by any chance Henry Adams has set 
down about Mr. Lodge the permanent record for 
posterity. There has been no man of our time more 
competent to appraise or more deft and adept in re- 
ducing to words the terse truth about Mr. Lodge. In 
his autobiography Mr. Adams has limned a little 
portrait of the Massachusetts Senator which, I sus- 
pect, will stand the test of many years without fading 
or losing its values : 

"Roosevelts are born and never can be taught ; but 
Lodge was a creature of teaching — Boston incarnate 
— the child of his local parentage ; and while his ambi- 
tion led him to be more, the intent, though virtuous, 
was — ... restless. An excellent talker, a voracious 
reader, a ready wit, an accomplished orator, with a 
clear mind and a powerful memory, he could never 
feel perfectly at ease whatever leg he stood on, but 
shifted, sometimes with painful strain of temper, from 
one sensitive muscle to another, uncertain whether to 
pose as an uncompromising Yankee ; or a pure Ameri- 
can ; or a patriot in the still purer atmosphere of Irish, 
Germans, or Jews ; or a scholar and historian of Har- 
vard College — ...standing first on the social, then 
on the political foot ; now worshipping, now banning ; 
shocked by the wanton display of immorality, but 
practicing the license of political usage ; sometimes 



LODGE 183 

bitter, often genial, always intelligent — Lodge has 
the singular merit of interesting. ... He betrayed the 
consciousness that he and his people had a past, if 
they dared but avow it, and might have a future, if 
they could but divine it." 

If I had any discretion, I would close this paper right 
here and not attempt to enlarge upon or amplify that 
rich bit of spirited condensation, but there have been 
brave men since Agamemnon as well as before. I can, 
perhaps, point out some of the deft strokes of the 
Adams portrait and indicate and emphasize some of 
the larger values. For Mr. Lodge is a very special sort 
of person. He really is a figure apart in the Senate, 
and, whether the other Senators acknowledge the fact 
or not, they do allow him a place of his own. He is one 
of the personalities. 

Strangers in the galleries always ask to have him 
pointed out. There is an atmosphere about him of 
tradition, of legend, myth — what you will. He re- 
tains the singular merit of interesting. But when the 
eager questioners in the gallery ask each in his own 
way upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, no- 
body seems to have a precise or definite answer. Yet 
Mr. Lodge always plays a conspicuous part in the 
Senate transactions, or in such of them as interest 
him. His seat is always near the top of the table. He 
is the nominal and titular "leader" of the Senate, yet 
he has no followers. He is not a natural leader, but 
one by virtue of his position in the Senate scheme of 



i84 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

organization. To be quite blunt about it, he is too 
finicky. 

I do not think that even his ardent admirers con- 
cede him a serene and lofty mind or a wide vision. 
Nor is he a man of quick and wide sympathies, of a big, 
open, generous heart. While his intelligence is every- 
where conceded, other qualities and attributes are 
lacking that, had he possessed them, would have 
enabled him to become such a figure in the nation as 
some of his great predecessors. 

It is quite true that Mr. Lodge has never made the 
most of himself; has never taken advantage of his 
abundant opportunities. He might have been a states- 
man of the first flight if the real right stufiF had been 
in him, instead of a partisan, practical politician. 
Massachusetts is habituated to statesmen. She has 
produced them. She knows what they look like. She 
knows their habits. She is willing to allow them their 
freedom, their independence; not to tax them with 
petty, political chores; to grant them ample space and 
charter for disinterested, constructive public service 
on the highest plane they could achieve. 

It is rather a pity that Mr. Lodge never made any- 
thing of, never exploited or employed, the franchise 
for development that his State gave him so many 
years ago. As Mr. Adams says, he never knew which 
pose to take, which foot to stand on. He has shifted 
from one to the other, and so it follows that he has 
never left the ground. He ha,S stayed with the politic 



LODGE 185 

clans, or, to quote again Mr. Adams's admirable and 
telling phrase, "shocked by the wanton display of im- 
morality, but practicing the license of political usage." 
That is comprehensive enough to be an epitaph. 

Mr. Lodge has been both fortunate and unfortunate 
in his career. Fortunate in that early in life the 
legend was built about him of "the scholar in politics." 
It was so persistently repeated that it has become a 
sort of trade-mark. In the beginning it was apparently 
a way of saying that Mr. Lodge was a superior person ; 
that he was unlike other politicians. And undoubtedly 
he was. He had great early advantages. He was born 
among the socially elect of his community. Even 
before he had a present, he had a background. 

From his early youth he consorted with what the 
March Hare has enduringly called the very best but- 
ter. He was amply educated, not only In school and 
college, but by his environment and associations. 
His bread-and-cheese problem had been settled for 
him before he was born. Public life was open to him 
on the easiest, pleasantest terms. If he desired and had 
it In him to be a statesman, to make and leave his 
mark on the public life and public affairs of his genera- 
tion, he had only to commence. 

There was an Immense pride In and store of good- 
will for him in his own State. The voters there have 
never checked or Interrupted his career. He has been 
continuously In the State and National Legislature 
since his youth. Given the tools, he has never been 



i86 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

denied a proper workshop for their use. And always 
there has been thrown about him this friendly legend 
of "the scholar in politics." 

Only the other day I asked a man In Boston to 
tell me something about Mr. Lodge and his career. I 
sought another and more intimate viewpoint than my 
own. This is what he instantly told me: "Lodge's 
history is a part of the history of his country." There 
it is again, the tired editorial touch, the worn, rounded 
formula, the easy judgment, the ready-to-wear phrase. 
I suppose Mr. Lodge's history is a part of the history 
of his country, but so was Dr. Mary Walker's, and 
John L. Sullivan's, and the Dalton boys', and Mrs. 
Jeannette Bloomer's, and the man's that struck Billy 
Patterson, and heaps and heaps of others, but that 
sort of thing gets you nowhere. 

I think we have the right to apply higher and more 
critical standards to Mr. Lodge. His has been no 
Horatio M. Alger, Jr., career. He has had no vicissi- 
tudes to encounter, no obstacles to overcome. He was 
launched full-panoplied on a sea of good fortune, under 
the happiest prophecies, and those prophecies have 
never been popularly revised. Indeed, by some subtle 
transmutation they have become popular appraisals, 
possibly through sheer iteration. In that Mr. Lodge 
has been fortunate. 

But has he been really fortunate? Hasn't he had 
some of old Zuan Cabot's hard luck ? Hasn't he, too, 
touched the austere coast of Labrador ? Does he sus- 



LODGE 187 

pect the great fertile mainland he has so narrowly 

missed? Will his performance stick; will it prove a 

permanent, enduring thing, or will it be clouded in the 

obscurity of the eleventh man, the unfortunate who 

has played his game with some skill and distinction, 

but, when the final appraisal came to be made, just 

missed getting in the ranking ten ? That is something 

for posterity to decide in the intervals of paying off the 

Liberty Bonds. 

In his autobiographical sketch in the "Congressional 

Directory" Mr. Lodge gives his profession as that of 

literature, I think, too, it is his true avocation. He 

has an agreeable style, a well-stored mind, a distinct 

viewpoint. And that last, a distinct viewpoint, he has 

not always had in politics. He has not always known 

whether to cry with Miranda, 

How beautiful mankind is! O brave new World! 
That has such people in't: 

or, like Emerson's "fine young Oxford gentleman," 
declare, 

There's nothing new and nothing true and no matter; 

or, to complain with the young Hamlet : 

The time is out of joint; O! cursed spite 
That ever I was born to set it right. 

Somewhere in Mr. Lodge's own writings is this 
sentence: "He, whose mournful incapacity for the 
production of new ideas has come sharply home to him, 
has the added pang of knowing how eagerly he thirsts 
for these new ideas from others and how much his 



i88 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

ability to recognize an old idea has been developed and 
increased." This may or may not have a wistful auto- 
biographical significance. I don't pretend to know. I 
came across it and copied it down. It is a good sen- 
tence, at any rate. 

If Mr. Lodge had devoted himself to literature with 
a single mind ; if he had been content to be a man of 
letters, he would be a clearer, stronger figure against 
the national horizon than he is to-day. Or, if he had 
given to politics the disinterestedness, the sweep of 
interest, the broadness, the soundness of method that 
he brought to his literary work; if he had not "prac- 
ticed the license of political usage"; if he had not 
thrown in his lot with the partisan, practical politi- 
cians, there would be another story to tell of him. 

His political life has brought him nothing real. I 
take his own telling ; his own record as he made it him- 
self for the "Congressional Directory." On the side 
of letters and history and scholarship he sets it down 
that he wrote : "The Land Law of the Anglo-Saxons" ; 
"Life and Letters of George Cabot"; "Short History 
of the English Colonies in America" ; "Life of Alexan- 
der Hamilton"; "Life of Daniel Webster" ; edited the 
works of Alexander Hamilton in nine volumes; "Stud- 
ies In History"; "Life of Washington," 2 volumes; 
"History of Boston"; "Historical and Political Es- 
says" ; "Hero Tales from American History" ; "Cer- 
tain Accepted Heroes," and other essays; "Story of 
the Revolution," 2 volumes; "Story of the Spanish 



LODGE 189 

War"; "A Fighting Frigate," and other essays; 
"Early Memories" ; "One Hundred Years of Peace" ; 
"The Democracy of the Constitution" ; in addition to 
two collections of speeches and addresses. 

Now, quite aside from the quality of all this writing, 
the mere quantity is a solid achievement. It has been 
recognized as such. He has received honorary degrees 
from Williams, Yale, Harvard, Brown, Clark Univer- 
sity, Amherst, Union, Princeton, and Dartmouth. 
He belongs to learned societies that recognize scholar- 
ship, culture, and intellectual attainment : The Massa- 
chusetts Historical Society ; The Virginia Historical 
Society ; The Royal Historical Society of London ; 
The American Antiquarian Society ; The American 
Academy of Arts and Letters ; and others that I will 
not take the space to recite. 

Against this body of sound and solid work and these 
honors in the field of literature and scholarship, what 
has Mr. Lodge to set down in the way of honor and 
distinction that politics has brought him ? I quote the 
recital he himself has made : member of the Alaska 
Boundary Commission ; permanent chairman of the 
Republican National Convention in 1900 and 1908 ; 
chairman of the Committee on Resolutions of the 
Repubhcan National Convention of 1904 and 191 6; 
temporary and permanent chairman of the Republican 
National Convention of 1920 ; two terms in the Massa- 
chusetts Legislature ; three terms in the House of 
Representatives at Washington ; and United States 



190 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

Senator since 1893. Mr. Lodge sets down no record of 
his enduring achievements and constructive, creative 
work as a national legislator, and neither shall L I 
would be at a loss, as presumably he was. 

Now it seems to me that this dual record of litera- 
ture and politics convicts Mr. Lodge of not having 
made the most of his great opportunities. The ampli- 
tude of the provision that was made in youth for him 
to become a statesman, the freedom from material 
cares and burdens, the extraordinary and whole- 
hearted and continuous support given him by his 
State, the happy fortune of an intelligent and appre- 
ciative constituency that preferred, at any rate in the 
Senate, statesmen to politicians — all these blessings, 
I venture to submit, he has not taken full advantage of. 

It will not be denied that he is a convinced and 
narrow partisan, that he has consistently "practiced 
the license of political usage." His contributions to 
letters and to learning have been obscured by his 
record as a politician. That is for him a misfortune. 
He has not played his hand well ; as it might have been 
played by a man of larger stature, of larger vision. He 
should have led out his trumps. 



WHY NOT KNOX? 

Acutely aware as I am of the irrelevance of the dis- 
covery, I will no longer refrain from communicating 
and making public record of the fact that one pair of 
Mr. Taft's trousers would make two suits and a short 
spring overcoat for Mr. Philander Chase Knox. Mr. 
Taft is a large package. Mr. Knox is a small package. 
Yet they have one thing in common. Each of them haa 
been offered a seat on the Supreme Bench three times. 
Such a thing never happened to any other man in our 
history. It is a record. 

Mr. Taft accepted the third proffer. Mr. Knox de- 
clined every time. He had an idea at one time that 
some day his mail would be addressed to the White 
House, and it was not then the practice of the Republi- 
can Party to select its presidential candidate from the 
Justices of the Supreme Court. Later the experiment 
was made, but it hardly will be repeated. 

Of the three offers of a place on the highest court 
that came to Mr. Knox, two were made by President 
Roosevelt and the third by President Taft. Here are 
the letters, never before published, I believe, in which 
the honor was tendered Mr. Knox by Mr. Taft, and 
Mr. Knox's reply : 



192 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

The White House 

Washington 
November 2Qth, 19 ii 

Dear Mr. Secretary : 

I have been talking over with Senator Oliver the 
regret I had that Pennsylvania did not offer a lawyer 
for the vacancy on the Supreme Bench. He said, Why 
not Knox? To which I replied that I supposed you 
would not accept the position. I don't know what I 
could do to fill your present place if you would accept, 
but my interest in the Court would lead me to put 
aside all other considerations to secure your service on 
that great tribunal. 

I write to offer the place to you formally because, If 
you do not accept now, as you did not when President 
Roosevelt offered it, you may have in writing evidence 
of what two Presidents have thought of your ability to 
fill the highest place that lawyers can aspire to. Don't 
think for an Instant that I could fill your present place. 
I don't know how I could fill it. In every way your 
service has been most gratifying and comforting. 
Without you at the head of the family, the circle would 
be desolate ; but for the reasons stated above, I wish 
to offer the Supreme Bench to you again. 

(Signed) Wm. H. Taft 

November 2gth, 1911 
Department of State 
Washington, D.C. 
Dear Mr. President : 

1 am deeply grateful to you for the offer ro nominate 




Copyright by Harris !f Ewing 



SENATOR P. C. KNOX 



KNOX 193 

me for the place upon the Supreme Court made vacant 
by the death of Mr. Justice Harlan. 

To be thought worthy to fill so eminent a place by 
one so conspicuously fitted to make discriminating 
choice is in itself an honor rare and distinct. 

I shall omit reference to the reasons which have 
influenced me in the past in determining that such 
abilities as I may possess for the public service do not 
suggest a judicial career, beyond saying that my ex- 
alted conception of the judicial function is not satisfied 
by any contemplation of my own aptitudes. 

Therefore, with the sincerest thanks for your expres- 
sions of confidence and over-generous appraisement of 
my present service, I will ask you, dear Mr. President, 
to accept this as an evidence of my unwillingness to 
sever our present most agreeable official relations. 
Faithfully yours 
(Signed) Philander C. Knox 

While Mr. Knox must share with Mr. Taft the dis- 
tinction of being one of the two men three times offered 
an associate justiceship on the Supreme Bench, he is 
the only person in the history of the United States who 
has ever been called away from a performance of a 
musical comedy at a theater to have such an honor 
thrust upon him. On a sunshiny November afternoon, 
in 1907, Mr. Knox resolved to do a thing he had not 
done in many years ; to go to a matinee at a local play- 
house of Washington. In the middle of the second acti 



194 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

an usher came tiptoeing down the aisle with a whis- 
pered message that Mr. Knox was wanted at the Wliite 
House at once. There was nothing to do but obey the 
summons. 

Outside the theater Mr. Knox learned that President 
Roosevelt had been trying to find him at the Capitol 
and at his residence, and that the messages from the 
White House were urgent. The Senator hastened 
across Lafayette Square and into the President's office. 
There Mr. Roosevelt told him that he wanted him to 
accept the vacancy caused by Justice Brown's retire- 
ment. Mr. Knox declined, leaving the way open for 
Attorney- General Moody to scale the dizzy height. 
When Justice Shiras retired, the tender of his seat in 
the Supreme Court was made to Mr. Knox by Presi- 
dent Roosevelt. Mr. Taft had previously declined both 
of these seats before they were offered to Mr. Knox. 

At mean low water the crown of Mr. Knox's head 
rises not more than five feet six inches above sea level. 
He is a small receptacle, but tightly packed, sharing 
with Mr. Elihu Root the distinction of being one of our 
most highly finished domestic products. Because he is 
so highly finished, Mr. Knox is a difficult man to de- 
scribe. He offers no point of attack. This does not 
mean that he presents a forbidding front. His person- 
ality is not known to any large number of public men 
in Washington. 

Mr. Knox chooses his friends with the careful dis- 
crimination of a collector. In his hours of ease he is a 



RNOX 195 

teller of good stories, and a most companionable man. 
In his daily walk he is not austere, but no one ever saw 
anybody — even a Senator — clap him jovially on the 
back and call him "Phil." Mr. Knox looks more like 
a French or Italian churchman, whose avocation is 
diplomacy and statecraft, than an American politician. 
There is shrewdness in the distinctive droop of his keen 
eyes. His face is an immobile mask which effectually 
conceals his thought. 

Every person who is born great, who achieves great- 
ness, or who has greatness thrust upon him owes cer- 
tain things to his biographers. Chiefly, he should be 
born of poor but honest parents, and from his infancy 
right through his career he should attach readable 
anecdotes to his name and fame. But what is one to do 
if one's hero is Philander Chase Knox ? Mr. Knox has 
never conformed to any of the established rules laid 
down by the Biographers' Union. He began wrong. 

As perplexing as anything else in Mr. Knox's rise in 
the world Is the discovery that he has not adhered to 
the conventional maxims and precepts for attaining 
success. He did not have the inestimable advantage of 
being born of poor but honest parents. He has over- 
come this disadvantage of his early youth. But he has 
been no more successful than the average safety- 
deposit vault in attaching anecdotes to his career and 
public service. 

In despair one compares him with a Yale lock for 
inherent secretiveness and ability to withstand assault 



lg6 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

from those who would pluck out the heart of his mys- 
tery. The real Knox, the inner Knox, is as difficult of 
access and as hard to describe as the mechanism of a 
hunting-case Swiss watch locked up in a burglar-proof 
safe. 

Once upon a time a writing man came over to Wash- 
ington and spent a day in the White House with Mr. 
Roosevelt. Then he went away and wrote a whole 
book about the President based on that day's observa- 
tions. Men have known Mr. Knox for years and years, 
and could not if their lives depended upon it write of 
him one thousand words of intimate characterization. 
Once, long ago, somebody seeking his anecdotal "vside" 
wrote that he was a confirmed and brilliant devotee of 
the game of billiards. As a matter of fact, he has never 
played the game. It is a problem with him to-day 
whether he shall become an expert at billiards, or issue 
a sweeping denial of the stories that make him one. 

Mr. Knox in the Senate Chamber is always a curious 
and interesting study. A certain fastidiousness of 
mind, coupled with a habit of aloofness, keeps him out 
of the running cross-fire of debate. A running cross- 
fire of debate in the Senate is usually a mild and gentle 
affair. It lacks the cut-and-thrust and rough-and- 
tumble features of a general debate in the House of 
Representatives. It is nearly always conducted with 
marked decorum and dignity, but even in these cir- 
cumstances Mr. Knox seldom participates. A curious 
sameness marks his participation in debate. He usu- 



KNOX 197 

ally rises to correct some misstatement of fact. Facts 
are Mr. Knox's specialty. His precise knowledge ac- 
counts for a large measure of his success. 

It is not of record that Mr. Knox has ever said or 
done a foolish thing in his public career. He carefully 
counts his words for public consumption. When a man 
becomes accustomed to receiving large sums of money 
for his opinions, he becomes chary of venting them 
loosely. Mr. Knox is not sensational. He has never 
coined but one phrase, or, more precisely, given a new 
application to an old phrase, that has met with tempo- 
rary but widespread popularity. After the Northern 
Securities case had been decided in favor of the Gov- 
ernment, capital was alarmed, and the then Attorney- 
General promised that the Department of Justice 
would not "run amuck" against great corporations. 
The phrase was quickly caught up and had its brief 
day. 

Mr. Knox, as Secretary of State in Mr. Taft's Cabi- 
net, was paid a salary of $8000 a year. Each of the 
other members of the Cabinet was paid $12,000. Be- 
hind the discrepancy lies the only known instance on 
record where Mr. Knox was caught napping. One 
night, when it was already known far and wide that he 
was to head Mr. Taft's Cabinet, Mr. Knox was reading 
in the library of his house in Washington. A servant 
brought in the card of a newspaper correspondent. 
The visitor was at once shown in. Without preface he 
said: 



198 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

"Senator, are you familiar with paragraph 2, section 
6, article l, of the Constitution of the United States?" 

Senator Knox was accustomed to being regarded as 
an oracle concerning the provisions of the Constitu- 
tion. He had heard himself referred to hundreds of 
times as "one of our greatest Constitutional authori- 
ties." Eminent lawyers had consulted him on knotty 
Constitutional problems, and paid him well for his 
opinion. Perhaps he had come to believe that the Con- 
stitution held no surprises for him. He was destined to 
receive one of the greatest shocks of his well-ordered 
Hfe. To the correspondent's inquiry he responded : 

"Why, certainly, I have read that paragraph many 
times, but I can't remember its provisions without 
looking it up." 

"Will you be good enough to read it now ?" 

"Of course," replied Senator Knox. " I'll be glad to. 
What do you want to ask me about it?" And he 
picked up a copy of the Constitution from his table and 
read : 

"No Senator or Representative shall, during the 
time for which he was elected, be appointed to any 
civil office under the authority of the United States 
which shall have been created, or the emoluments 
whereof shall have been increased, during such time ; 
and no person holding any office under the United 
States shall be a member of either House during his 
continuance in office." 

"Even then the point didn't strike me," said Mr. 



KNOX 199 

Knox afterwards. "I looked up at my friend waiting 
for him to tell me what he wanted me to elucidate for 
him. 

"'Well,' he said, 'doesn't that prevent you from be- 
coming Secretary of State in Mr. Taft's Cabinet?' 

"Then I saw it. I was never more astonished in my 
life. Of course it did. As one of the Senators from 
Pennsylvania I had been present and had voted when 
the salaries of the Vice-President, the Speaker of the 
House of Representatives, and the secretaries of the 
Executive Departments were increased to $12,000 a 
year. I not only voted for the increase in pay, but 
against all the amendments that sought to overthrow 
the proposed increase. The increase was carried in the 
Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Appropriation 
Bill providing for the fiscal year of 1908. I'd forgotten 
all about it." 

Other experts on the Constitution in the Senate and 
House sought in vain to discover some loophole or 
roundabout method by which Mr, Knox might legally 
be paid the same salary as other Cabinet members. 
But no way was found, and it was determined to put 
back the salary of the Secretary of State at the old 
figure, $8000 a year, from which it had been increased. 
Not until March 4, 191 1, would Mr. Knox's term as 
Senator have expired ; and until then he had to content 
himself with a salary $4000 less per annum than his col- 
leagues received. 

Mr. Knox's ineligibility was brought to the atten- 



200 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

tion of Washington by the correspondent of a Buffalo 
newspaper, and for many days the Capital was indined 
to find a huge joke upon Elihu Root, President Taft, 
and Mr. Knox himself. It seemed to the layman that 
three such Constitutional lawyers and jurists should 
have been familiar enough with the Constitution to 
foresee the contingency before it was pointed out to 
them. Mr. Knox had to endure much chafhng on his 
lack of knowledge of the venerated instrument he has 
expounded so learnedly on the Senate floor. 

Mr. Knox has been a Washington figure since 1901, 
when he left his law practice to become McKinley's 
Attorney-General. Apparently finding the environ- 
ment congenial, he has been in the Cabinet or in the 
Senate ever since. After McKinley's death Roosevelt 
continued him as Attorney-General and Taft made 
him Secretary of State. Mr. Knox has either got a 
season ticket or knows the right people in Pennsyl- 
vania politics, for between Cabinet jobs he comes to 
the Senate with a sureness and ease that indicate per- 
fection of arrangements at home. 

He had his sixty-eighth birthday in May, 1921, but 
he apparently has taken out a writ of injunction, or 
what not, against the usual ravages made by the 
years, for he seems as fit and peppery and full of juice 
as ever he was. He sits up and takes his nourishment 
with the best of them. He still cocks up his tail feath- 
ers and can be as irascible and as assertive as he was 
ten and more years ago when he used to stand up to 



KNOX 201 

Mr. Roosevelt. He was one of the few men (Elihu 
Root was another) who "talked back" to Mr. Roose- 
velt. There used to be a story current that one day 
when the President asked the advice of the Attorney- 
General on a problem that was then pressing, Mr. 
Knox replied gravely 

" I am sorry that you have asked for my opinion, 
because up to the present time your proceedings have 
been free from any taint of law." 

That sort of thing. Mr. Roosevelt once wrote of Mr. 
Knox in a private letter: "He standing for the law. 
and I for rude and primitive justice." 

To me there is a certain humor in the circumstance 
that Mr. Knox laid the foundation of his career and 
his future as an admiralty lawyer In, of all places in the 
world, Pittsburgh. That Inland town seems such an 
odd place in which to become a rich and successful 
practitioner of maritime law. But when Mr. Knox set 
up his practice there the tonnage passing through the 
port of Pittsburgh was greater than that of any other 
American port. In the beginning his previous experi- 
ence In the office of the United States District Attorney 
and acquaintance among river men and shipping inter- 
ests turned the admiralty business of that region in his 
direction. From that It spread and grew and became 
diversified and very profitable. 

The impression I want to leave with you is of a 
steadfast, moderate, alert-minded man, keen and 
quick in his Insight, thorough and deliberate In his 



202 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

mental operations, and with a native gift, which has 
been cultivated, for the underlying philosophy of the 
law. He is not long-winded ; he doesn't chatter. He 
has a capacious, acute, and subtle mind. Ever since 
he became a public man he has had to be reckoned 
with. He is an outstanding figure in the Senate to-day, 
and would be even a larger factor if he chose to work 
harder ; but he doesn't. He is through with hustling 
and the hurly-burly. He has gone his full distance, he 
knows it, and so he takes it easy. 

In sum : An able citizen, at ease and enjoying the 
fruits of his labors. 



HOOVER: THE FRIEND OF ALL 
CHILDREN 

The truth about the sort of man Herbert Hoover is 
lies somewhere between what the Belgians think of 
him and what Senator Reed and some of his other 
critics say of him. He is neither a demigod nor a false 
alarm, but the Belgians have got a better line on him 
and are nearer right than his critics will publicly ad- 
mit. It suits the purposes of the Missouri Senator and 
some others to pretend to believe that Hoover is a sort 
of footnote to a duke, a hybrid English product out of 
Ouida or The Duchess, a languid dweller in "palaces" 
attended by flunkeys in red plush breeches. 

"And, laughing lightly, Bertie Cecil dipped his 
tawny mustaches in a beaker of Chambertin." 

That sort of thing. There never was a more gro- 
tesque and ludicrous misconception about any man. 
Had you gone along Hornton Street, Kensington, in 
London, any time prior to 1914, and asked the police- 
man on the beat, or the passing postman, "Who lives 
in The Red House ?" I'll lay the price of an inner tube 
against a gallon of gas that either of them would have 
replied, "An American gentleman. Sir. Something in 
the City, I think. 'E keeps himself very quiet, Sir." 

That vague London phrase, "Something in the 
City," covered Mr. Hoover's identity like a blanket 
prior to the war, except among mining engineers an4 



204 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

mining men. He was, so far as the world at large is 
concerned, an unknown, though rich and successful 
young man. 

It also suits the purposes of some persons to pretend 
to believe that Mr. Hoover's present stature and the 
lengthy shadow he casts is the creation of press agents. 
It is sheer courtesy that prompts me to say of these 
that it suits their purposes to pretend to believe these 
things about Hoover. I will not be so ill-natured as to 
do them the injustice of accepting these fables as their 
honest beliefs. There never was an absurder libel than 
this one that Hoover was made by his press agents. 
It has been just the other way about. No press agents 
erected Mr. Hoover. He, on the other hand, has en- 
larged the professional reputation and increased the 
income and earning capacity of more than one press 
agent. He gave them something real to work on and 
with ; material with an appeal to public sentiment and 
public imagination. 

Most of the talk about Hoover and his press agents 
and his craving for publicity is the hard-wrung and 
bitter cry of envy. Stated broadly, all men in public 
life and at the head of large public enterprises want 
publicity. They seek it as a great part of their reward. 
They are willing to pay liberally for it in cash. It is 
not Mr. Hoover's press agents, but the success that 
has attended their efforts that started the baying of the 
pack. 

}t is in order, too, to observe, as bearing on Mr. 




HERBERT HOOVER 



i 



HOOVER 205 

Hoover's qualities and capacity and present stature, 
that the enterprises in which he has been engaged, and 
which have brought him so much publicity, have not 
been furtive ones. It was essential to the feeding of 
Belgium and occupied France and the later relief work 
in Central Europe that the whole world should know 
the problem and how it was being solved and treated. 
It was absolutely essential that the whole world should 
take an active personal interest in it. The necessary 
thing was to arouse a wide interest, to inflame the 
imagination and enlist the good- will and active partici- 
pation of the world. Otherwise Belgium would have 
starved as Russia has starved and as China has 
starved. Publicity was a tool and used as a tool. It 
was equally true of the Food Administration job after 
we got into the war. There were no laws to enforce 
wheatless days and meatless days and heatless days 
and gasless Sundays. They were enforced by an edu- 
cated public sentiment created by an intelligent 
publicity. 

Yet, oddly enough, all this flood of publicity has left 
Hoover's personality as unknown as it ever was. It was 
Hoover's public business that got the publicity. 
Hoover's work, Hoover's problems, Hoover's methods 
in solving those problems are fully known. He took a 
chance when he invited the world to participate and 
look on when he took up the Belgian business, for if 
that had been a fiasco he would have been one of the 
most spectacular failures in all history. The Hoover 



206 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

publicity has not disclosed and revealed the Hoover 
personality. People still come to Washington and ask, 
"What sort of fellow is this man Hoover ? What is he 
really like when you come to know him?" 

Well, to tell the truth, I don't know that I have ever 
come really to know him. He is one of the shyest, 
most sensitive, most modest, most inarticulate of men 
in his private relations. If it were not for his known 
public achievements, I do not think I should ever sus- 
pect him of great or exceptional capacities. He talks 
very little, and then only by fits and starts. He does 
not say bright, clever, or startling things. He has 
no gift at phrase-making or brilliant or improvised 
characterization. He can make himself interesting, 
however, when the mood takes him. 

I heard him talk one night about traveling in the 
interior of China in the long ago before the Boxer 
troubles. It was as fascinating and enthralling a nar- 
rative as I ever heard. Simply told, full of light and 
color, keen and salient observations and savored with 
humor. That was a rare instance within my own ex- 
perience. 

Then one day a door was opened to me by a child, 
and it has led me to believe that children know Hoover 
sooner and better than grown-ups ; that he reveals 
himself to them, and throws down all the barriers that 
his shyness erects against the world of adults. I am 
indebted to Miss Jean Kellogg, the young daughter of 
Verpon Kellogg, for opening the door. She told me one 



HOOVER 207 

evening, with shining, dancing eyes and glowing cheeks, 
of a dam she and Mr. Hoover and Allan (Hoover's 
son) were building across some stream. She told me of 
Hoover, wading in the water "with all his clothes on" 
and wet and muddy to the arm-pits, as he helped to 
lay the stones and fetch clay and to chink the cracks. 
It was clear that she and Hoover were pals ; that they 
were on terms of intimacy and understanding that had 
been denied some of his closest associates in larger 
affairs. 

The story interested me, and I was delighted to be 
invited to come to a picnic one hot summer morning 
and assist at the completion of the dam. We drove out 
the Conduit Road toward Cabin John Bridge, turned 
off into a dirt road into the woods, and left the car. 
A little way through the underbrush brought us to 
what is known in Virginia as a " run," in New England 
as a "crick," and down in my part of the world as a 
large "branch" or small creek. In brief, a stream of 
the minor sort, making Its way down from the hills, 
over a rocky bottom, to the Potomac. 

The job that morning was to fetch stones, to dig 
clay, to make sluiceways and spills, and to put in place 
two overshot waterwheels. I saw Hoover walk into the 
water "with all his clothes on." I saw him muddy and 
wet to the waist, entirely absorbed and centered In 
what he was doing. I discovered that he could play 
with children on terms of absolute ease, Intimacy, and 
equality. He wasn't at all consciously "amusing the 



2o8 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

children." He was having a good time ; just as much 
fun as they were. It interested me that his idea of a 
day's holiday was to devote it to children — and to 
building something. It interested me even more that 
children accepted him on easy, equal terms. Plenty 
of grown people want to play with children, but don't 
know how. They try, but the children stand aloof. It 
is this quality in Hoover that I think I have discerned 
plus what he has done in Europe that led me to call 
him "The Friend of All Children." If my observation 
has any truth and validity, it throws a light on the 
passionate zeal he has shown in feeding the children of 
Europe since the war. 

Vernon Kellogg says that, when he went to Poland 
in 1919 to find out the exact condition and the actual 
food needs of the people there, a single unpremeditated 
sentence in his report seemed most to catch Hoover's 
eye and hold his attention. It did more ; it wetted his 
eyes. This sentence was: "We see very few children 
playing in the streets of Warsaw." The children were 
not strong enough to play. They could not run ; many 
could not walk ; some could not even stand up. It led 
to a special concentration of effort on behalf of the 
children. All this was after the armistice ; after Bel- 
gium and occupied France had been fed while the war 
was on. 

And these children of Poland were not the only ones. 
The Hoover family in Eastern Europe numbered at 
least two and a half million hungry children. I know 



HOOVER 209 

of my own knowledge that Hoover never sought any 
applause for this performance. He never put himself 
in the way of being lionized. There is ample evidence 
that when he went into Belgium during the war he 
tried to keep his presence unknown. He would not go 
if he could help it to the children's canteens. 

I have two stories to tell about Hoover and the 
Germans. They illumine both. One of them became 
public after the armistice, the other is told by Mrs. 
Hoover. Chronologically and under the rule of place 
aux dames her story comes first. 

At the time of the Boxer troubles in China, the 
Hoovers were beleaguered in Tientsin. In their com- 
pound they had a cow and the cow had a calf. Under 
the circumstances, it seemed an admirable arrange- 
ment. It meant fresh milk, and if the siege continued 
a long time it meant fresh meat. One day the cow dis- 
appeared ; stolen, of course. Hoover wanted his cow. 
Problem : How to find a cow in Tientsin ? The town 
was in a state of siege. It was full of Allied troops. 
What to do? A happy thought. That night Hoover 
took a lantern, a Chinese boy, and his little calf with a 
halter about its neck and walked the dark streets. As 
they went, the calf bleated for its lost mamma. As they 
went through the black town In the middle of the night, 
there was no sound but this S.O.S. from the calf to Its 
lost parent. Presently there came from the compound of 
the German troops in the town a long answering moo. 
Hoover advanced upon the sentry at the gate and said : 



210 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

"I want my cow." 

The sentry said : " Is the calf outside the calf of the 
cow inside?" 

Who could doubt It? 

Very well, then. The calf outside must of a necessity 
join the cow inside. It did. Hoover went home with 
his lantern, and his Chinese boy, but without his calf. 

Two of the Germans who made most difficulty for 
Hoover and the Belgium Relief Commission were 
Baron von de Lancken and his assistant, Dr. Rieth. 
They did as much or more than anybody to make life 
and work difficult for the Hoover men in Belgium. 
Yet it was this pair that proposed to Hoover, after the 
armistice, to arrange with him for getting food into 
Germany through the Relief Commission. They re- 
ceived this reply by telegraph : 

"Mr. Hoover's personal compliments and request 
to go to hell. If Mr. Hoover has to deal with Germany 
for the Allies, it will at least not be with such a precious 
pair of scoundrels." 

The Belgians were often puzzled and hurt by Hoover's 
plain avoidance of their deep expressions of gratitude. 
The Belgian Government tried to thank him, but he 
would accept no decorations. But King Albert found 
a way. One day at La Panne, just after the fighting 
ended. Hoover was lunching with the King and Queen. 
After lunch the Belgian Cabinet appeared. Before 
them all the King created a new order without medal, 
ribbon, or button, or any insignia. Hoover is the only 



HOOVER 211 

member. He was pronounced : "Honorary Citizen and 
Friend of the Belgian Nation." 

If I am any judge of motive, this whole job of feed- 
ing the hungry in Europe was a heart impulse and not 
a head impulse. It was executed as a piece of efficiency 
engineering in terms of calories, and sustenance units, 
and overhead charges, and transportation and dis- 
tribution expenses, but it was conceived, I believe, in 
terms of quick sympathy and a heart-sickness and 
hurt that little children should die of starvation. 

Hoover is an efiQcIency engineer by education. He 
got that in the schools. It was taught him. But pri- 
marily he is an artist, with an artist's creative imagina- 
tion and sensitiveness. He has been in business all his 
life, except through the war period. He has dealt and 
lived with business men. He has more influence to-day 
with business men than any other man in Washington. 
They are more at their ease with him than with any 
other man in the Administration. They think of him 
and deal with him as one of themselves. And yet he is 
as unlike the average business man as any could be. 
He wears no slight aspect of the merchant, or trader, 
or manufacturer, or dealer in commodities. If you met 
him and didn't know who he was, you would be at a 
loss to place him, for he has no vocational stigmata. 
He has led a life of romance and adventure in all parts 
of the world : Colorado, Mexico, Korea, the Malay 
Straits Settlement, South Africa, Burma, China, 
Australia, Russia. That is a fair spread of country. 



212 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

In the end, and after his initial experiences, Hoover 
became a creative artist in mining. He developed a 
new department in his profession. He made good 
mines out of bad ones ; successful ones out of unsuc- 
cessful ones ; solvent mining concerns out of bankrupt 
mining concerns. He made money and a reputation 
in the process. He did this in the field, not on the ex- 
changes. He dealt with materials and men and trans- 
portation on sea and land, and housing, organization, 
system — not bits of paper. 

All that creative energy and trained efificlency and 
engineering skill that went first into mining, then was 
switched on a day's notice to Belgian relief, and again 
without intermission to Food Administration and back 
to child-feeding in Europe, is even now going full tilt in 
the Government at Washington. 

The Department of Commerce, which is Mr. 
Hoover's present single nominal and titular charge, is 
breaking out of bounds almost every day. It is en- 
larging its capacities and functions. It is being remade. 
It will be a different thing when Hoover gets through 
with it. But beyond that he shares with Mr. Hughes 
the responsibility of being one of Mr. Harding's chief 
advisers. He knows about Europe and foreign affairs 
and conditions. He knows about labor. He is not 
destitute of acquaintance with the broad subject of 
finance. 

But he doesn't know about politics. His adventure, 
if it may be so called, toward the Presidency was sadly 



HOOVER 213 

mishandled, not only by Hoover, but by all those as- 
sociated with him in the enterprise. There undeniably 
and clearly existed a widespread and strong public 
sentiment for Hoover for President in 1920. It had 
strong newspaper support from diverse and unexpected 
sources. Yet nothing was made of it. It was never 
organized ; it was never used ; it was dissipated. 

Mr. Hoover is in political office now, but not "in 
politics." There is a difference. I haven't the faintest 
notion whether he intends to go into politics, whether 
he intends to seek political preferment — run for 
office ; but if he does I want to be there or thereabouts. 
It will be interesting. I should like to see what happens 
if he applies his imagination, his creative ability, and 
his practical engineering efficiency to national politics 
as it is now organized and played among us. He has 
proved himself in two widely separated fields one of the 
most competent men of this generation. He is only 
forty-seven years old ; a young man to be a world 
figure. The interesting thing and the speculative thing 
about him at this juncture, in his new field as a par- 
ticipant in the administration of government, is, what 
will he do next, how far will he go ? He has made him- 
self a springboard for a tremendous leap. Will he take 
it? I, for one, intend to stick around and see what 
happens. 



UNDERWOOD: HE SUPPLIES BALM 
TO GILEAD 

It is always grateful and refreshing, and particularly 
so on a steaming hot and humid July afternoon, to 
wander into the Senate galleries and observe the Hon- 
orable Oscar Wilder Underwood, senior Senator from 
the sovereign State of Alabama, purveying balm to the 
noble army of martyrs in the windowless and shut-in 
chamber below. He speaks to them in words of truth 
and soberness. Long ago he discovered that a word 
fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. 
To him it was not said in vain, let your speech be 
always with grace, seasoned with salt. Such is his 
habit. He is at his best when 

Dire combustion and confused events 
New hatched to the woful time 

must be confronted, smoothed over, and the wrinkles 

taken out. In such troubled and angry crises it is his 

invariable role and his natural inclination to, 

Speak gently! 'tis a little thing 
Dropped in the heart's deep well; 
The good, the joy, that it may bring 
Eternity shall tell. 

In fine. It is Mr. Underwood's great talent to bring 
men to be of one mind in an house. That is why he 
naturally and seemingly without efifort rises to the 
leadership of any free assemblage of men. 

In the present piping summer of the blessed year 




Copyright by Harris ^- Swing 

SENATOR OSCAR W. UNDERWOOD 



UNDERWOOD 215 

192 1, on the 5th day of July, Mr. Lodge, the majority 
leader in the Senate, in the sticky heat rose in his place 
and proposed that Congress take a recess of three 
weeks. Mr. Underwood, as minority leader, concurred 
in the proposal. I quote him a bit just to show his 
general style : 

"Senators are no different from any other set of men. 
They can work effectively just so far, and then their 
mental capacity for work breaks down and they will 
not work. I am talking about the men who work, who 
carry the responsibility of making legislation in their 
own heads and on their shoulders. If with this minor 
legislation you drive this team through July and into 
August, when the time comes that the House of Repre- 
sentatives shall send to this body the great problem 
that is before us, the question of solving the finances of 
this country and putting them on a safe and sound 
basis, you will not have a Senate here to attend to busi- 
ness, or one that is capable of attending to business. 

"I do not say that theoretically. I have tried it. I 
was honored once by being selected as leader of the 
body at the other end of the Capitol. I had the same 
responsibility on my shoulders, and I reached the 
point once where I wanted to adjourn Congress 
through a long, hot summer, but other influences 
insisted that I should not do so, and I drove that Con- 
gress through a long, hot summer, and then critical 
legislation came up for consideration. I could not get 
a quorum, and the only way I brought an effective 



2i6 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

quorum there was by having passed a resolution cut- 
ting off the pay of every Member of Congress every 
day that he did not answer a roll call. It was unfor- 
tunate, it was drastic, but it had to be done in order to 
function. 

" I hope the Senator will bring this to a decisive vote 
on the real issue. Of course, I will not interfere, as it 
is his business, not mine, and I will not propose an 
amendment, but I would like to see him extend the 
time one week so as to give men who live a distance 
time to get home and attend to their business." 

At this point, Mr. Lodge broke in to say, "That is 
what I was going to suggest," and he at once modified 
his proposal to a four-weeks recess. 

Before the vote was taken Mr. Underwood had a 
colloquy with Mr. Norris. He began his reply with 
these disarming words : 

"Mr. President, I love the Senator from Nebraska, 
not for his intellectual resources, but for his goodness 
of character. He loves his friends and he always wants 
peace and enjoyment and quietude in the world, pro- 
vided the balance of the Senate goes along his way." 

Always the gentle approach, you see. From the 
very beginning that has been his style. Always he has 
been like that. When he first tried to come to Congress 
in 1894 his election was contested. He was thrown out 
and his Republican opponent was seated. Pleading his 
case, Mr. Underwood silver-tongued the boys for the 
first and last time of which I can find any record in his 



UNDERWOOD 217 

life. The young Oscar was raised in the Virginia school 
of manners and was early taught to say that he had had 
a good time when he left the party. His silver tonguing 
was good standard stuff, too. He used the familiar 
place-the-chalice-to-your-lips gambit, and these are the 
words he said : 

" I say to you that bold was the man who stole the 
sacred fire of Heaven and hid it in a hollow reed, but 
not less bold is he who steals the elective franchise of 
the people of Alabama and hides it in a hollow deci- 
sion of this House. You have put the bitter cup to the 
lips of the people of Alabama, but I warn you to pause 
lest some day even-minded Justice shall place the 
chalice to your own lips. 

"I thank you, gentlemen, for your kind attention." 

You see he never forgot to be polite even to his 
executioners. A Sydney could do no more. He was 
never more characteristic. 

Nowadays when he is not conciliating or smoothing 
the wrinkled front of some parliamentary fracas, he 
usually talks about pig iron and steel billets and such 
like things, which, as young fictionists so like to say, 
do not intrigue me. Nor would they you, I suspect, 
at this juncture, and so I pass rapidly on, merely 
remarking for the sake of the record that Mr. Under- 
wood is one of the acknowledged and conceded tariff 
experts. He knows all about the schedules from aard- 
varks, skins of, undressed, in bales, or alive and on the 
hoof, through alcohol and alum to "articles not other- 



2i8 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

wise enumerated" In the omnibus section, and paying 
a duty of five per cent ad valorem. 

He is the author of the tariff act under which we are 
now protected from the pauper labor of Europe. It is 
supposed to be a tariff for revenue only. Mr. Under- 
wood believes in that sort of tariff even if he does come 
from a strongly protectionist section of Alabama. 
He comes from the Birmingham district where they 
produce coal, iron, steel, and kindred products notably 
susceptible to chills and blights in the draught of 
foreign competition. Ask any steel master and he will 
tell you how steel billets stir uneasily in their sleep and 
are unhappy unless they are lying snug behind high 
tariff walls. 

But all that is aside from Mr. Underwood. He is 
normal. Normal pulse, normal temperature, normal 
respiration ; everything normal. He Is conservative, 
too, but no more so than the Tropic of Cancer. He is 
Indigenous to the north temperate zone with a mild, 
equable temperament, and If there Is such a thing 
as a salubrious disposition, his Is. He Is quiet, bland, 
suave, smiling, patient, methodical, never frets, never 
worries ; at least, he never lets you catch him doing 
It. Sagacious, fair-minded, steadfast, and firm In his 
dealings, open and aboveboard in negotiation, he has 
shown fine qualities of leadership In a parliamentary 
body. 

For a great many years, I am told, there has been 
a saying in Alabama that no man ever became ac- 



UNDERWOOD 219 

quainted with Oscar Underwood without wanting to 
do something for him. No man in politics or in public 
life could ask for a greater asset. It comes near telling 
the whole story of Underwood's successful and pleasant 
career in politics. He has never engaged in unseemly- 
wrangles and squabbles. He has never had to be ag- 
gressive and disagreeable to attain a goal. He has 
come on to be a figure in the world through the exer- 
cise of an invariable and unfailing courtesy. That is 
something to have done in an occupation so given to 
disputes, quarrels, and controversy as present-day 
politics. In his own party and in his own way he is as 
great an emollient as Mr. Harding himself. They are 
both healing and soothing, and give out an impression 
of kindliness and good-will. Mr. Underwood has found 
his true vocation in being leader of a Democratic 
minority. It is a much more difficult task than leading 
a majority in either branch of Congress, and, I venture 
to assert, there has never been a man in Washington 
better fitted for the job. 

Although I know from bitter experience that political 
prophecy is the most gratuitous form of folly, I dare 
commit myself to the flat statement that so long as he 
remains in national politics Oscar Underwood will be 
a presidential possibility. He is, as the saying goes, 
presidential timber. As It seems to be our custom to 
elect alternately a peppery, lively President and then a 
sedate, calm and placid one, probably Mr. Underwood 
■\von't have a chance until 1928. But it seems a safe 



220 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

bet that he will be voted for again in a Democratic 
National Convention. 

At this point, and without further delay, I must have 
a special paragraph devoted to the Underwood hair. 
No sketch of him is complete without it. It is always 
done, even by the apprentice biographers not yet in 
the union. One might as well write of Mr. Roosevelt 
and say nothing of his teeth, or Mr. Hughes and leave 
out the whiskers, or Mr. Taft and not mention his 
girth and his judicial temperament. It simply can't 
be done. 

Very well, then. Mr. Underwood's hair Is sleek and 
slick and always parted very precisely. It is never 
ruffled, never tousled. There is a line for every hair 
and every hair is on Its line. Nothing but his shaving 
mirror ever saw a hair of his head out of place. No 
matter how hot it is or how cold or how the stormy 
winds may blow, the barometric pressure on the Under- 
wood hair never varies. It Is commonly supposed by 
the less observant that Mr. Underwood parts his hair 
In the middle. This Is not accurate. I have looked 
down on the top of his head for fifteen years from the 
galleries of the House and Senate, and I ought to 
know. He does not part his hair on the 90th meridian 
or Greenwich mean time, but a little to one side ; say, 
daylight saving time. Then he slicks it straight down 
and it stays put. So much for that. 

Mr. Underwood has never made the welkin ring. He 
is not noisy. With the arms hanging naturally by the 



UNDERWOOD 221 

side and breathing from the diaphragm, he enunciates 
pleasantly, slowly, distinctly. He does not orate, yet 
he is an effective albeit a rather monotonous speaker. 
How he escapes being unctuous is a mystery, but he 
is not. His chief political and personal qualities are 
patience and an even serene good temper. He dis- 
played both of them to a notable degree one day when 
he brought a wool bill into the House. It was a highly 
controversial proposal and Mr. Underwood was ques- 
tioned about it. Four times he was asked to explain it, 
and four times he responded in detail. The fourth 
questioner who had come into the chamber late was 
hooted by the House when he asked to be told all about 
it, but Mr. Underwood insisted on giving him the full 
explanation that he had given the others and in just as 
much detail. As an exhibition of courtesy and un- 
ruffled good temper it won the House. 

I venture to say Underwood hasn't an enemy in 
either chamber. Bryan is the only politician that he 
doesn't get on with and they have had some conspicu- 
ous rows, one in particular, in which Mr. Underwood 
had the support and sympathy of his colleagues in 
Congress. 

Underwood is as typical of the New South, the busi- 
ness, industrial, and commercial South as dear old 
Senator Morgan and General Pettus, his famous pred- 
ecessors in the Senate from Alabama, were typical of 
the Old South. He is unlike the run of Southern repre- 
sentatives in Congress even now, Also he is the only 



222 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

representative from the far South who has been seri- 
ously considered and voted for in national convention 
by his party for the presidency. In the Baltimore 
Convention of 191 2 that nominated Wilson, Under- 
wood ran third in the prolonged balloting, and there 
are not lacking politicians who believe that had his 
name not been withdrawn he might have been nomi- 
nated. I don't know about that. It was a tenuous 
chance, if it existed at all. 

Mr. Underwood has been in Congress now continu- 
ously since 1896. After the Republicans put the bitter 
cup to his lips in 1894 he went home and had another 
and successful try at the ensuing election. He stayed 
in the House until 1915, a matter of nineteen years, 
when he moved over to the Senate. It took him seven- 
teen years to reach the leadership of the House, but for 
fifteen years of that period the Democrats were in the 
minority and the House leader was a Republican. He 
has come quickly to be the Democratic leader in the 
Senate. 

Men who stay long enough in the House find their 
level. Not a few men who come to Congress are leader- 
less sheep. This is not a slur on Congress. It is equally 
true of the arts, the professions, business and religion. 
This type in the House were looking for guidance. 
There came to be a saying in the ruck of the House : 
" It's safe to follow Underwood." It was, too. He had 
a following before the leadership came to him. The 
Democrats in the House have always been kittl? 



UNDERWOOD 223 

cattle, Inclined to stampede, not susceptible to dis- 
cipline, full of views, never the ordered phalanx the 
Republicans have presented. Being Democratic leader 
was never a sinecure, but Underwood was successful. 
He proved himself a master hand at composing differ- 
ences among his followers. By the time he came to the 
Senate his capacities were known. He had served his 
apprenticeship. The leadership passed naturally to 
him. 

There are two sentences, says Plutarch, Inscribed 
upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the 
uses of man's life : " Know thyself," and, "Nothing too 
much," and upon these all other precepts depend. 
"Always," says George M. Cohan, "Always leave 'em 
happy when you say good-bye." And upon these three 
precepts is founded the successful career of Oscar W. 
Underwood who supplies the balm to Gilead. 



BORAH: THE HEART BOWED DOWN 

I don't quite know why William Edgar Borah is not a 
larger figure in the world than he is to-day. He has 
been in the Senate since 1907, a participant in the na- 
tional scene with an assured place on the best platform 
that the country offers to any man who desires to be- 
come known and to be heard. In the Senate he has 
been on the successful and popular side of public issues 
and controversies more often than on the losing side. 
Yet, I suspect that he is less known than any of the 
outstanding figures in the whole Washington gallery. 
The person who best knows Borah has been heard to 
say: "William would enjoy life so much better if it 
wasn't for all the pleasant things in the world." The 
secret of Borah's failure to be a popular hero despite all 
his admirable qualities may lie in this cryptic remark. 
It was made just after Borah, by the introduction of a 
resolution in the Senate, had reduced the Harding 
inauguration ceremonies from the elaborate festivities 
that had been planned — parade, inaugural ball, danc- 
ing in the streets, and all that sort of thing — to the 
simple and bald affair that it became on the East porch 
of the Capitol. Whatever the reason, there is a general 
sort of feeling current among the few that Borah has 
never received quite the full measure of popular ap- 
plause and recognition that he has deserved. This 
feeling is, in part, based upon the circumstance that 




Copyright by Harris 5r Ewing 

SENATOR WILLIAM E. BORAH 



BORAH 225 

so many other men who have done less seem somehow 
to cast larger shadows. 

Mr. Borah is not, as we put it in our vivid, nervous, 
native tongue, a crab. Nor is he a gloom, though he 
can at times approach perilously near the border line of 
that category. But certainly his is the heart bowed 
down. He is more inclined to view with alarm than to 
point with pride. 

Life to him is real, life is earnest, and there Is much 
to be done before the grim reaper cometh. He is a seri- 
ous man full of serious thoughts and if he has a light 
and festive or frolicsome side it has never been publicly 
disclosed. 

He is keenly sensitive, I believe, and easily hurt. My 
own notion is that this quick susceptibility to adverse 
criticism has kept him from thrusting himself forward 
and maintaining against attack the position to which 
his qualities and capacities entitle him. He has not got 
a thick hide ; he feels the slings and darts of outraged 
fortune. Other men less alive to possible hurt and 
wounds press ahead of him. 

Mr. Borah marches along in the front ranks of his 
party, but he never throws himself out far in advance 
of the main body of his associates. A conspicuous 
instance of this trait of his character was exhibited in 
191 2. In that year, as all men know, Roosevelt split 
the Republican Party and defeated Taft. Until the 
time of the actual break Mr. Borah was allied in sym- 
pathy and, indeed, in fact with the Roosevelt faction. 



226 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

He marched up to the field of Armageddon with them^ 
but when they decided to go over Niagara Falls in the 
barrel that George Perkins had provided, Mr. Borah 
bade them a civil good-bye and bo?t voyage and returned 
to the Republican Party which he had really never left. 
He was a progressive but not a Progressive. 

I don't mean in the least to imply that he was a 
quitter, or that he played the part of a faint-heart or 
traitor in that diverting episode. The whole maneuver 
was sharply and clearly divided into two parts. It 
began as a division in the Republican Party and re- 
tained that aspect until Taft was nominated. That was 
the first phase. Then came the matter of deciding 
whether or not to emulate the old monk of Siberia 
whose life grew drearier and drearier, and follow T. R. 
over the brink. Of those who went over all of them 
went through the whirlpool and the rapids, some of 
them swam ashore and made their way painfully back 
to their party, the others have never been heard from 
since. 

Mr. Borah met those who came back and helped 
dress their wounds. He had been one with them in 
spirit until they made their free-will offering by jump- 
ing. As the events proved, they had made a futile ges- 
ture and Mr. Borah had shown wisdom and saved him- 
self a circuitous journey out of his party and in again. 

I recall the whole adventure because it is more Illus- 
trative and Illuminative than any other incident that 
I know anything about in Mr. Borah's public career. 



BORAH 227 

Passion and party feeling were excited and inflamed at 
the time. The men who had been with Roosevelt and 
who had to make a choice were under a stress and 
strain. They each acted as the general excitement 
affected them. They had a free choice. Now you can 
either say of Borah that he was faint-hearted and 
lacked boldness and daring or that he kept his head. 
For myself I choose the second alternative. 

I know that he has courage, for he has proved it on 
other occasions, and for that matter he proved it again 
when he did not become a Progressive. All the pres- 
sure on him was from that side. 

It was his course at that time that has left confusion 
in many minds about his status as between the Right 
and the Left. To-day in Washington you will hear him 
called both a conservative and a progressive. He seems 
to reside indeterminately in the political spectrum 
between the red and the violet rays. Sometimes he 
moves over to the left as far as the orange and again 
to the right as far as the indigo, but never reaches 
either of the two extremes. 

I think it is this unconscious preference for the 
pastel shades instead of the raw primary colors that 
has, also in degree, affected wider public recognition of 
Mr. Borah's capacities. Where there are so many 
things to engage public attention and so much organ- 
ized clamor, only the brightest or noisiest catch the 
eye and ear. 

Mr. Borah has so conducted his share in public 



228 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

affairs that he has never attached his name or fame to 
any of the admirable proposals that he has borne such 
a large part in making into law. I cite, by way of 
proof, the act for the direct election of Senators. That 
was a long, hard fight. Borah pressed it with resolu- 
tion, with courage, with ingenuity and skill against a 
subtle and strong and entrenched opposition until 
success came. That was an excellent public service 
well performed, yet I venture that few now know or 
remember the part Borah played. 

As another instance, the income tax law will serve. 
That is one of the fairest of all taxes in principle. It is 
levied directly and if the schedules or brackets are 
properly designed it falls equitably on all who pay it, 
Mr. Borah bore a part in urging the legislation through 
the Senate. In the debate which he carried through 
with skill and learning he had opposed to him some of 
the best minds in the Senate. That, too, I suspect is a 
popularly unknown part of his record. 

A present modern instance is an even more striking 
example of how he wins races and others get the prizes. 
Mr. Borah introduced a resolution as an amendment to 
the naval bill, suggesting or inviting the President to 
call a conference of representatives of the United 
States, Great Britain, and Japan to consider the limi- 
tation and reduction of naval armaments. It hung fire 
for a long time. In several preliminary stages it was 
defeated. The opposition in the Senate was strong. 
Soon after President Harding came to the White 



BORAH ^ 229 

House definite word was spread abroad and brought to 
the Senate that he did not wish Mr. Borah's proposal 
to pass Congress. He did not wish to have his hand 
forced. He was, in Frank Tinney's phrase, a architect 
and he had other plans. 

Borah hung on ; he pressed ; he had a sound proposal. 
Public sentiment grew stronger and stronger in favor of 
it until one fine morning the entire opposition crumpled, 
dissipated, disappeared without a sight or sound. Invi- 
tations were issued not only to Great Britain and 
Japan, but to France, Italy, and China, to meet in 
conference at Washington to consider limitation of 
armaments and other cognate matters. 

Senator Johnson said of it all on the floor of the 
Senate : " It was the greatest personal triumph that 
has been won by a Senator in my time in this chamber." 
And so it was ; and for that matter, in the time of 
others who have been much longer in Washington than 
the bold Califomian. 

But Borah, oh ! where was he ? Lost in the mists. 
Spurlos versenkt. Posted missing at Lloyd's. Gone 
down with all hands. Effaced. As the poet so tersely 
said of Lord Ullin and his daughter, "The waters 
wild went o'er his child, and he was left lamenting." 
They didn't even leave him a lock of hair as a keep- 
sake. Overnight it became the Harding plan, the 
Harding conference, the Harding disarmament policy, 
and as I indite this requiem at River House on the 
austere coast of Maine, it even appears that he will not 



230 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

sit with other Senators who will represent the United 
States at the meeting which Borah and Borah alone in 
the Senate brought into existence. They took the cake 
and credit, too. It isn't fair. In a little while many 
will forget, and others will never know that Borah ever 
had any part or connection with the plan. It is another 
one of the large number of things that something ought 
to be done about. 

But Mr. Borah has not been without his share of 
luck. He had two narrow squeaks and escaped un- 
scathed. The first one was when he was "mentioned" 
for Vice-President on the ticket with Mr. Taft. There 
was considerable talk about this at one time, but 
nothing came of it. That, as it proved, was a piece of 
good luck. The second threat came later when it 
appeared for a time that Mr. Borah would be Colonel 
George Harvey's personally selected candidate for the 
Republican nomination for the presidency in 191 6. 
He seemed to be about to take Mr. Borah up. He 
circled above his prospective quarry in wide swoops, 
emitting strange cries, and indicated the Idaho Senator 
by name. It didn't last long, however, but it was a 
puzzling performance while it did last. 

All of these things, you will observe, while they have 
affected Mr. Borah's fame, have not checked or im- 
paired or halted his career. While he has been at- 
tached to conspicuous proposals and conspicuous 
movements, they have not made him as conspicuous as 
lesser men have become with less cause. Such of the 



BORAH ^ 231 

fruits of victory as are included under the category of 
fame, notoriety, publicity, a widespread recognition of 
work well done, have not been his. While he has 
missed great public fame he has achieved a reputation. 
He has never been "placed," but that is because he has 
never placed himself. 

In Washington, where he has come to be a distinct 
figure and where he is under closer observation than he 
receives from the country at large, he is described by a 
number of adjectives. Solid is one of them, conserva- 
tive another, independent a third ; to many others he is 
primarily a progressive, and every one agrees that he 
is quiet, patient, able, and of a serene temper. He is 
in the first flight among the Senators and always will 
be, whatever the quality of the membership in that 
chamber. 

He has not in him the making of a great popular 
leader, because he lacks a certain daring, a certain 
imaginative quality that inhibits him in time of crisis 
from taking his political life in his hands and jumping 
off into the void with his eyes open. He always keeps 
one foot on the ground. He is not the man to head a 
forlorn hope, but neither is he a man to be trifled with. 
He makes no bones about opposing President Harding 
whenever he sees fit, and that is something that few 
care to do in these early days of the administration. 

In sum : An effective, useful, intelligent public serv- 
ant. The people who are disappointed in him are 
those who expect more of him than he has in him, and I 



232 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

confess he gives out constantly to many the impression 
of having in him the motive power for longer and 
higher flights than he has yet essayed. Though he is 
fifty-six years old, and has been in the Senate fourteen 
years, he still creates an attitude of expectation among 
those who have been his close observers. They still 
seem to think of him as a man whose future is before 
him ; as a public man whose big things, whose peak 
achievements, are yet to be accomplished. 

Be that as it may, as the policeman in O. Henry's 
story said, but it is this feeling of expectation he suc- 
ceeds in creating that makes him the interesting and 
uncertain figure that he is. 



LA FOLLETTE: BOB THE BATTLER 

Mr. La Follette missed the train. It is only in the 
rarest instances that time, tide, circumstances, the 
hour and the man keep an appointed tryst with 
Destiny. One or more of them is always late. Affairs 
are badly ordered on this terrestrial sphere. Mr. 
La Follette's are a case in point. I am thinking how 
different things might have been with him if, in his 
plastic youth, or even fifteen years ago when first he 
came to Washington as a Senator, he had come in 
contact with George Santayana and read him atten- 
tively and understandingly. Particularly if he could 
have read Mr. Santayana's paper on English Liberty 
in America, which had not been written at that time. 
He could have learned things about us that he has 
never discerned or divined that would have been 
helpful to him in the career he laid out for himself, 
and which he has truncated without exactly knowing 
how he did it. 

For Mr. La Follette and his partisans in particular, 
and for the general enlightenment and in the public 
interest, I propose here and now to do Mr. Santayana 
the injustice of isolating some snippets from his pene- 
trating analysis. First he says that the thing in us 
that makes us what we are is the spirit of free coopera- 
tion, and that the root of it is free individuality. 

"That most parliamentary measures should be 



234 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

trivial or technical and really devised and debated 
Dnly in government offices, and that government in 
America should so long have been carried on in the 
shade, by persons of no name or dignity, is no anomaly. 
On the contrary, like the good fortune of those who 
never hear of the police, it is a sign that cooperative 
liberty is working well and rendering overt govern- 
ment unnecessary." 

"It makes impossible the sort of liberty for which 
the Spartans died at Thermopylae, or the Christian 
martyrs in the arena, or the Protestant reformers at 
the stake ; for these people all died because they would 
not cooperate, because they were not plastic and 
would never consent to live the life dear or at least 
customary to other men. They insisted on being 
utterly different and independent and inflexible in 
their chosen systems. ..." 

"Liberty for all pensive or rabid apostles of liberty, 
meant liberty for themselves to be just so, and to 
remain just so forever, together with the most vehe- 
ment defiance of anybody who might ask them, for 
the sake of harmony, to be a little different. They 
summoned every man to become free in exactly their 
own fashion, or have his head cut off." 

"To cooperate with anybody seems to these 
esprits forts contamination, so sensitive are they to any 
deviation from the true north which their compass 
might suffer through the neighborhood of any human 
magnet." 




Copyright by Harris if Ewing 

SENATOR ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE 



LA FOLLETTE 235 

All this is but to say that Mr. La Follette is lacking 
in a certain sweet reasonableness ; that he has no 
facility for mutual easements and accommodations; 
that he rubs the fur on the national hide the wrong 
way. When he came to the Senate in 1905 he seemed 
at the threshold of his larger career. His work in Wis- 
consin had made him a national figure. I remember 
there was considerable trepidation in what are 
euphemistically known as the highest quarters as Mr. 
La Follette began his progress toward Washington. 
There was a fear that he might take the center of the 
stage ; that he might overshadow and, perhaps, even 
displace other then dominant figures in the national 
scene. It proved to be a baseless apprehension. The 
step forward was the beginning of the eclipse. 

If Mr. La Follette had had a sense of proportion, 
discrimination, detachment of view, and even a tithe 
of Santayana's close and keen understanding of the 
national genius, there might have been another story 
to tell of him. He tried to hustle us into salvation, not 
subject to amendment or compromise. It just couldn't 
be done. Mr. La Follette could no more accommodate 
himself to becoming one of a board of directors in a 
joint stock limited liability company than could Peter 
the Hermit. 

And yet if I had to make a list of the foremost public 
men of this generation, of men who have done con- 
structive work in the public interest and for the public 
good, I should put Mr. La Follette's name well up on 



236 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

the roster. I should do it unhesitatingly. Anybody 
would. His work in Wisconsin alone would entitle 
him to such a place. 

He found the State in the hands of a sordid group of 
political reactionaries, "highbinders," as they used to 
be called, entrenched at home, entrenched at Wash- 
ington, powerful in national politics, and devoted his 
life to the restoration of the State to democracy, to 
political cleanliness. He did it. His State programme 
was one worthy of a great and able man. It was effec- 
tive. It was intelligent. It was comprehensive. It was 
thorough and constructive. He had good men en- 
listed with him, men of backbone and force and imagi- 
nation, men who were not afraid. He brought into the 
service of the State a group of trained economists. 
He made the State University the thinking machine 
of the State in his reforms. 

In no other State government that I know about 
have such men as La Follette found been brought into 
public service. It was indeed a new crowd. It was 
largely made up of men never in politics, and who under 
other circumstances would never have been thought 
of for political office. They were precisely and literally 
and actually public servants. And mighty good ones 
they proved to be, too. But they never got into politics. 
The men I have in mind were admirable public serv- 
ants, but they never became La Follette 's political 
lieutenants. Frailer men got those jobs. 

There is no political career in the United States that 



LA FOLLETTE 237 

will stand closer and more critical and searching ap- 
praisal than this State work of Mr. La Follette's. 
That work was done between 1880 and 1905. He was 
about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old when he 
began it. He was at the top of his stride when he came 
to Washington. In this summary I do not take into 
account the three terms that he spent in the House of 
Representatives before his three terms as Governor of 
Wisconsin. That was an interlude, or, perhaps more 
precisely, a prelude. 

In the national field Mr. La Follette has not been 
successful. He has not won a following. He is to-day 
in the Senate an isolated figure. At one time a poten- 
tial and possible candidate for the presidency, he has 
not to-day a vestige of a chance for that great prize. 
There is no faint promise that his name will ever be 
considered again. His self-thwarting is one of the 
tragedies of politics. To overturn a great evil oligarchy 
in Wisconsin was a work of immense difficulty. It 
tried his capacities and his nervous system to their 
utmost. The national field was too much for him. He 
failed because of several things. A part of the trouble 
lay in the inherent enormousness of the job. A part of 
it lay in his inability to understand the spirit of free 
co6peration among us that I have already invoked the 
aid of Mr. Santayana to indicate. A part of it lay in 
his personality. 

He has the fatal defect in a reformer of making 
virtue odious, or, at any rate, tiresome and a bore. 



238 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

But he is a single-minded, first-class fighter. He is no 
carpet knight. No matter how dark the prospects, or 
how dubious the outcome, he goes in and fights. 
Defeat does not daunt him. He does not compromise 
for success. One of his weaknesses lies in the fact that 
he will not compromise when he could do so without 
sacrifice of principle. He has an intrepidity of spirit 
which is unequaled in any man in public life I have 
ever known. Like Ruggles's friend, Cousin Egbert, 
he would fight a rattlesnake, but he would never give 
the snake the first two bites. This intrepidity never 
deserts him. It is as much to the fore in a sound course 
as in an unsound one. 

I can very well believe what I have been told by 
men who have been his close associates, that there is 
no more charming and agreeable personality than La 
Follette when one is working with him and accepting 
his leadership not only in action, but in thought. If 
Mr. La Follette should chance to see this sentence, I 
believe he will accuse me of doing him a rank and 
bitter injustice, but I think that in his relations with 
his co-workers he always distrusts any one over whom 
he cannot mentally tyrannize. That has always caused 
him trouble. I do not know that he is wholly to blame, 
yet at bottom it is his fault, after all. 

He has been "betrayed" or "deserted" (one some- 
how seems to fall naturally to these lurid terms in 
saying anything about Mr. La Follette) more than 
once by his lieutenants. The interests opposed to hirn 



LA FOLLETTE 239 

made a practice of tempting away from him one aide 
after another. This enlarged and inflamed Mr. La 
Follette's capacity for suspicion, made him quick to 
distrust, slow to give his confidence. He has had some 
bitter experiences. He takes things hard, anyhow. 
These "betrayals" have made him mordant. The 
very look out of his eye is one of suspicion. You are 
acutely aware that he is on his guard, wary, deter- 
mined not to be trapped or caught unawares. His 
defenses are always up. This is an unhappy state of 
mind to have to sustain. It does not make for ease or 
breadth or contentment or a clear, unhampered out- 
look on the affairs about one. 

Mr. La FoUette has not been without fault in bring- 
ing about these conditions. It was difficult or impossi- 
ble for really strong and able men, forceful personali- 
ties who could stand on their own feet, to subordinate 
themselves as completely as they had to do while 
working in close association with the Wisconsin leader. 
This forced him to elevate to places of trust in his 
organization one weak man after another, and they 
were induced by one means and another to leave him 
in the lurch. That he should have weak men about 
him and that they should fail him is La Follette's one 
great weakness as a political leader. After all it was 
the La FoUette programme they were seduced from, 
not theirs. La FoUette does not permit the men closely 
about him to have programmes of their own, nor does 
he permit them to have a sense of ownership as a joint 



240 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

and common proprietor in his programme. He could 
not. 

Persons who have been temporarily in Mr. La 
Toilette's confidence I know have heard him speak of 
some of the most sincere men in public life as false to 
the people. He genuinely believed what he said. It 
was because they did not agree wholly with him in 
some matter of public concern then uppermost for 
discussion and settlement. This intolerance of spirit 
and quickness to suspect lost him one good collaborator 
after another. It is one of the reasons for his lack of 
success in the national field. We are an essentially 
kindly, tolerant people and for the most part work out 
our problems by rule of thumb. The general instinct 
is "to pull through somehow by mutual adaptation, 
and by seizing on the readiest practical measures and 
working compromises. Each man joins in and gives 
a helping hand, without a preconceived hand or a 
prior motive. Even the leader, when he is a natural 
leader and not a professional, has nothing up his sleeve 
to force on the rest, in their obvious good-will and 
mental blankness." (That, you will perceive, is Mr. 
Santayana again.) That is what Mr. La Follette does 
not understand. In his spirit he is a hermit, and — 
dare I say it with any hope of being understood by the 
purists — a crab. 

I do not know what his fundamental political views 
are. To my knowledge he has never announced any- 
thing but political programmes which he hoped to 



LA FOLLETTE 241 

have comprehended in the platforms of the Republican 
Party. 

I do not think the fault lies in him or his work that 
the forces he fought in Wisconsin gained control of 
the State when he came to Washington. There had to 
be, we being what we are, a descent from the exalta- 
tion he had largely produced. But it is due and directly 
chargeable to his tyrannical and suspicious nature, 
that when he went away from Wisconsin there was no 
one left behind to keep the fight going successfully. 
Yet the whole gain was not lost. Some of the good 
work held. La FoUette has elevated the basis on which 
political action must take place in Wisconsin. It bids 
fair to last long after his time. 

And this is to be said with emphasis : La Follette is 
absolutely and entirely unselfish so far as seeking to 
reap personal profit from his public service is con- 
cerned. He is not in public office for private pelf. He 
is even fanatically on the level. And finally he is a 
man of the most prodigious industry. Every night his 
light is going until a late hour. He is constant in his 
attendance at the Capitol. He does not participate 
largely or frequently in the running discussion of the 
routine legislative grist in the Senate. He specializes 
in subjects that interest him and then makes a long 
speech that may run over two or three, or, perhaps, 
even four days' sessions of the Senate. He has just 
made such a speech this summer (1921) on British 
influence in or on the Shipping Board. It showed an 



242 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

immense amount of tedious labor. It was all illustrated 
with diagrams and charts such as he usually employs, 
but to what end ? It didn't create a ripple. If it was 
reported in the newspapers, I didn't see it. 

What Mr. La FoUette says does not command wide 
popular attention. That is his sorry misfortune. Once 
he did command attention ; he had that power. He 
has lost it. So that his present estate is doubly his 
sorry misfortune. He is a sincere man, an honest man, 
a man who seeks fervently to do the right thing, but 
he pitches his note too high. It is shrill. A little more 
kindliness, a little more tolerance, and then again a 
little more kindliness would have served him well. 
It's a pity, for he might have been a great force for 
good if he had had more understanding. Now he seems 
condemned to spend the rest of his days with the 
eleven obstinate jurymen. It's too bad. 



LEWIS: LILAC AND LILACS 

Being impressions and reflections upon observing James 
Hamilton Lewis, one time a Senator from Illinois, in 
transit to the Capitol in an F Street car at Washington 

A LAVENDER shirt, a white-satin tie, and a jade stick- 
pin; washable white chamois gloves; whiskers daintily 
combed, and hair that needed both brushing and 
cutting about the ears; a silk hat; a mottled-red cane 
with a silver crook; large, crusted-gold cuff-buttons 
shaped like dumb-bells; soft, reversed cufYs pulled 
well down over the hands; fawn-colored spats; light 
black-and-white-checked overcoat, with a blue-bor- 
dered handkerchief showing from an outside breast- 
pocket; a broad, black eyeglass cord falling negligently 
across the shirt-front; the fixed and "dressy" posture 
of a Leyendecker figure in a collar advertisement; an 
acute consciousness of self and of the interest and 
furtive stares of the other passengers in the car 



SIMS: A FIRST-CLASS SAILOR MAN 

I THINK I have never known any man who walks about 
the world so gayly and so unafraid as Rear Admiral 
William Sowden Sims. It seems incredible that he 
used to wear side whiskers ; funny little chinchilla 
mudguards shaped like the breakfast rolls that the 
French call brioches. They ran down in front of his ears 
in the cleft between the under side of his jawbone and 
his neck and were closely trimmed as a privet hedge. 

They were a lapse of his youth, of the period in the 
late seventies, of the time of Rutherford B. Hayes, 
when hair and the human face were in the last phase of 
their great battle to determine which should survive. 
When the armistice came and the face emerged trium- 
phant, Admiral Sims abandoned his fancy hedge and 
adopted the standardized regulation : Beards, naval 
officers for the use of, Mark One. He has stood fast by 
it, and made it the regulation issue. 

This partiality for whiskers is an inherited trait. 
The Admiral's father wore "Admiral Walkers," a 
long, flowing, luxuriant growth of wild and tangled 
clematis on either side of a clean-shaven chin. One can 
only say it was the fashion in those days, not a blot 
on the 'scutcheon, and pass quickly on to other and 
present aspects of our foremost naval man. 

For that, of course, is precisely what he is, the first 
figure in the navy, the ablest officer of our generation 




Cu/iyright by Harris Sf Ewing 

REAR-ADMIRAL WILLIAM S. SIMS 



SIMS 245 

in the sea establishment. If there is a more competent 
officer on the active list of the navy, he has not made 
himself known and his influence felt. And I think he 
has come to his present estate by being unafraid. 

Fear, as everybody ought to know, is the greatest 
deterrent to action, to enterprise, to accomplishment. 
It inhibits. It makes commonplace men. It reduces to 
a dull level. It makes for stagnation. It is a force for 
evil. Fearful men, timorous men run in the ruck. They 
may have good qualities, but they aren't the men who 
shove things along. 

I do not seek to decry or reflect upon either the con- 
duct or the traditions and the spirit of the army and 
the navy when I say that prolonged service in either 
branch tends to make officers, I do not say fearful and 
timorous, but circumspect — very, very careful and 
circumspect. Not in action, mind you, not toward any 
foe or enemy they might be sent against, but toward 
their superiors in their own service, toward rank, 
toward and about the evils of red tape and petty regu- 
lations in which they are enmeshed. 

It is a situation and a condition that breeds the 
habit of avoidance of responsibility. It makes the 
game of "passing the buck" what it has become. The 
man who can most adroitly "pass the buck" is the man 
with the cleanest record. It means avoiding the hard 
places in the road. It means safety first to the nth 
power : a good rule of the road, but not necessarily a 
good rule of life. The man who keeps both feet on the 



246 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

ground and never takes a chance may be a good insur- 
ance risk, but he does not get much travel, speed, or 
action. 

Now Admiral Sims, so far as my knowledge of him 
goes, has never been one of the buck-passers. When he 
has come under my observation, he has always been 
ranging like an outfielder with his head up and ready 
to cry, " I got it, I got it," when any one threatened to 
get in his way. The "buck," the responsibility, is what 
he has sought 

Like some of Admiral Sims's close associates in the 
navy, I do not take much stock in his so-called "indis- 
cretions." To me they have always seemed more like 
maturely deliberated utterances. I do not think he 
goes off at half-cock. He knows very well what he is 
doing. He exercises when he sees fit, and thinks a need 
exists, his quality of being unafraid. He has grown in 
his own stature and in public esteem through these 
"indiscretions." Another thing he has that makes for 
confidence and poise and a quick willingness to back 
his own play, and that is, perfect health. To-day at 
sixty-three he is a better man physically than the 
average man of forty-five. He functions easily. He 
keeps in the pink. That perfect good health would 
make him chipper and gay, even without his eager, 
dancing spirit. 

Once upon a time, now in the long ago, I went to an 
East Side ball in New York. Word had come to my 
newspaper office that there might be trouble there. It 



SIMS 247 

turned out to be a decorous and sedate party until a 
lad took his little flat derby hat, shaped precisely 
like the half of a Rocky Ford melon, and shied it out 
into the middle of the floor. "Hooray for hell," he 
said. Then it began. I think Admiral Sims has a little 
something of that spirit in him. There is a certain 
gayety and joyousness of spirit about him that likes a 
shindy. It is a quality the Irish have. It made Donny- 
brook Fair famous. Admiral Sims has enjoyed his 
controversies. He has carried them on in a spirit of 
high good humor. They have stimulated him. He is 
always a gay companion when he is under fire and 
engaged in a cut and thrust enterprise. 

In sharp contrast with this carefree aspect of his 
personality is his methodicalness of method. He has 
a remarkably retentive memory, really one of these 
of-course-I-place-you-Mr.-Addison-Sims-of-Seattle 
minds. But he does not depend on this memory alone. 
He reenforces and documents it. His books, papers, 
records, maps, etc., are kept in a precisely ordered, 
cross-indexed filing system with a place for everything 
and everything in its place. One of his aides once told 
me: 

" I recall one day in Newport when the Admiral was 
laid up in bed with a slight cold (I never knew him to 
have anything more serious than this) receiving a note 
from him asking me to send him a certain paper that 
was in his ofhce. The memo which I received from him 
was a sketch of his ofhce bookcase with all of the boaka 



248 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

on the two upper shelves indicated by name and the 
location of the paper he wanted indicated with refer- 
ence to one of these books. I found the paper exactly 
where he said it was and sent it to him forthwith. 
That bookcase, Hke everything else he has ever seen, 
was photographed on his mind and the negative filed 
away for future reference." 

This is not to say that Admiral Sims is a man who 
loves details and buries himself in them. He knows 
how to keep subordinates busy, and to distribute work 
as well as any man I have ever known. I only seek to 
indicate that he can be carefree and joyous when he is 
in a row because he has carefully and thoroughly pre- 
pared his position before he begins to fight ; to support 
my contention that he does not go off at half-cock. 

He does not play for his own hand, either, his own 
personal, selfish reward, aggrandizement, and prefer- 
ment. He is bound up in the navy. He has been honest 
with himself and the country he serves so conspicu- 
ously. I frankly confess that I was not wholly and per- 
fectly sure of his disinterestedness until the World War. 
In some of his other enterprises that brought him into 
the public eye and notice there was a possibility that a 
yearning for personal acclaim and a desire to lift him- 
self to become a figure in the world might have been 
one of his motives. There were never lacking persons 
to whisper this charge. 

But the great war was the searching test. Admiral 
Sims could have so managed his affairs and the affairs 



SIMS 249 

of the na\'y abroad, so conducted himself toward the 
Navy Department and the powers at home in Wash- 
ington, could have been so smooth, so pliant, so dis- 
creet, so accommodating and complaisant, so adroit in 
taking the easiest way, that he might have returned 
full of honors — which he would not have deserved. I 
think there is no doubt he could have so contrived his 
business that he would have been made a full Admiral 
for life with the thanks of Congress, and mayhap a 
sword or some additional token. But he was never 
tempted to advance his personal interests at the ex- 
pense of the public interest or an efhcient prosecution 
of the war to an early and unimpeded conclusion. He 
might have taken to the water and paraded himself 
before a gaping continent had he so chosen, and only a 
handful of people in all the world would have known 
that he was play-acting. To the others he would have 
been a hero. 

Instead, as was his duty and obligation, he kept a 
careful, orderly record of all that was done and all 
that was not done that affected our participation in the 
war at sea. Then when the war ended he came home 
and had it out with Mr. Josephus Daniels and the 
Navy Department. He submitted a piece of construc- 
tive, documented, supported, and attested criticism of 
naval administration. He pressed it boldly and fear- 
lessly. He forced a controversy. He got a Senate in- 
vestigation and the whole naval conduct of the war 
thoroughly aired and investigated. He was sustained 



250 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

in his contentions and his criticisms. It was a public 
service. It was not the first nor the second time he had 
stood up against the Navy Department and won. It 
was the third time. 

/In 1 90 1, after trying in vain over a long period 
through official channels to get action and remedy, 
Admiral Sims wrote directly to President Roosevelt 
over the head of the Navy Department and charged 
that the navy couldn't shoot for beans. He proved 
it by the target practice records. It was a disillusion- 
ing and disconcerting revelation. It raised a rumpus, 
Roosevelt brought Sims home from China and put 
him in charge of the navy's target practice. 

"Do exactly as he says for eighteen months," said 
Roosevelt. "If he does not accomplish something in 
that time, fire him." 

Sims was inspector of target practice for six and one- 
half years, until our naval gunners became the best 
shots in the world. Whether they have retained that 
eminence, I do not know. There was some good shoot- 
ing in the North Sea a little while ago in which we did 
not participate. But if we are not still the best naval 
gunners in the world, we have not fallen back to the 
humiliating inefficiency that was ours prior to Sims's 
criticism. That was a piece of effective constructive 
criticism in naval gunnery. 

His second notable encounter with the Navy De- 
partment grew out of his first. He brought about a 
radical change and improvement in naval construction, 



SIMS 251 

Roosevelt helped him in this, too. From 1900 to 1907 
Sims constantly poured into the Department a flood 
of reports in which he repeatedly charged gross errors 
of construction in our fighting ships. They weren't 
properly protected, they weren't properly designed, 
there was virtually nothing about them that was not 
wrong ; they were armored under water but not above, 
the guns lay so low that in a sea they were awash ; 
the gun apertures in the turret were too large and 
offered no protection to the gun crews, the magazines 
were exposed and badly placed. 

"The Kentucky is not a battleship, at all. She is the 
worst crime in naval construction ever perpetrated by 
the white race," was one descriptive comment. 

By the beginning of 1908 these charges and asser- 
tions were appearing in public print. Sims was threat- 
ened with court-martial. Secretary Metcalfe, who 
didn't know or even suspect that President Roosevelt 
was privy to all that was going on, wrote Sims a for- 
midable letter. But Roosevelt quietly squelched all 
that. The present design and construction of Ameri- 
can battleships dates from those criticisms and that 
issue forced by Sims. 

Twice it was thought the part of "discretion" by 
the President or the Navy Department to administer 
Pickwickian reprimands to Admiral Sims for his "in- 
discretions." At the Guildhall in London in 1910 he 
said : "If the time ever comes when Great Britain is 
menaced by a European coalition she can count uporj 



252 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

every ship, every dollar, and every drop of blood of her 
kindred beyond the sea." Of course, this was a great 
"indiscretion," doubly so because of the fact that it 
was true. Sims was reprimanded, and then when his 
prophecy came true was dispatched to London to give 
the aid he had promised ; that he had stepped outside 
his jurisdiction to promise. 

His latest "indiscretion" was a frank public expres- 
sion of his views about a faction or an element of the 
Irish people. It inevitably caused a commotion and 
Sims was duly reprimanded by the Secretary of the 
Navy — and then went across the street and spent a 
pleasant social hour by invitation with the Command- 
er-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, the President of 
the United States. The next three months he spent in 
endeavoring to answer all the letters, telegrams, and 
messages of warm commendation he received. The 
flood of these came to be so great that he had to have 
a form letter of reply printed. 

Sims is a keen professional. The navy is his be all 
and end all. He thinks ahead. He tries to peer into 
the future. He has a clear professional vision and a 
working imagination. He has never become a "shell- 
back" in the navy. 

In the present rivalry between the surface craft and 
the aircraft at sea his mind is veering toward the air- 
craft as something new and full of undeveloped possi- 
bilities. He has been urgent before committees of 
Congress in asking for airplane carriers. These car- 



SIMS 253 

riers may prove to be the capital ship of the immedi- 
ate and imminent future. This eager, almost boyish, 
quality of his mind that makes him quick to receive 
new ideas, new things, is a thing that makes him lik- 
able as a companion. 

Young officers In the navy are his warmest and most 
enthusiastic admirers. One of them told me: "There 
has always been a team whenever we were at sea with 
Admiral Sims as the captain, elected to this position 
by the team because he has always been the best mem- 
ber on it. His discipline has always been a discipline 
of appreciation rather than a discipline of fear." 

A fine, gay, upstanding sailor man. That he is un- 
afraid is the thing to know and remember about him. 



PERSHING: BEAU SABREUR; 1921 MODEL 

We are adjured to laugh where we must, be candid 
where we can, but vindicate the ways of God to man. 
The sentiment, as, of course, you know, is Alexander 
Pope's. It seems to me admirable. Honesty is my 
policy. Frankness is my besetting sin. 

So much by way of preface to my confession that I 
never even saw General Pershing until the day he drove 
from the Union Station to his hotel in Washington 
months after the armistice. I am one of perhaps a mil- 
lion of the expeditionary force who never laid eyes on 
General Pershing in France. In my particular case it 
was not his fault, but mine, that we never met. I 
dodged him. This was not rudeness on my part, but 
fear, a sentiment toward our chieftain that I found 
myself sharing with thousands. My own particular fear, 
which also was shared, was that if the great man ever 
came upon me I would be harshly and severely chided 
about the details of my uniform, and perhaps sent 
home for not being dressed according to regulations. 

Two things I quickly discovered as I approached the 
zone of the armies in my new capacity as a reserve 
officer. One was that it was a sign of bad luck to cross 
the path of the General, or as he was commonly called 
behind his back, the Old Man. The other was that it 
made a lot of difference how you were dressed. These 
two factors of warfare as they oppressed or concerned 





Copyright by Underwood tf Vnderiruod Copyright by Underwood !( Underwood 

BEFORE AFTER 

WHAT THE WORLD WAR DID FOR GENERAL PERSHING 



PERSHING 255 

the individual were inseparably entwined. One hinged 
upon and was a part of the other. Fear of, or thought 
about the foe, was a minor consideration unless and 
until one immediately confronted him. 

It was borne in upon one that this was not only a 
siege war, and a war of position, but a war of detail. 
Little things counted. At London, and before I reached 
France, I learned that General Pershing signed his 
communications to the War Department as, "Com- 
mander-in-Chief, American Expeditionary Force," 
and that the replies from Washington were addressed 
to "Commanding General, A.E.F." This difference 
in designation was much commented upon, and im- 
portance attached to it by the military minds. 

The Pershing zone of influence abroad extended to 
and included London, I bought a water-proof cap 
cover there and within an hour a captain of coast 
artillery checked me with, "That's not regulation." 
I held out that it was a reasonable precaution, and I 
thought allowed. It ended in a bet of half a crown and 
an appeal to the book of regulations. I won, but the 
captain gave in reluctantly. 

" I don't believe the Old Man would stand for it. If 
I were you I wouldn't wear it in France. It might get 
you in wrong." 

He was my friend, and I knew wished me well. The 
dawning of fear came here. 

The shadow of General Pershing's interest in what 
the well-dressed soldier is wearing next fell upon me 



256 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

when I was inducted into the harness of the Sam 
Browne belt. While the transport that took us across 
lay at the dock in New York I stood on the upper deck 
watching the troops pour into the ship. A young 
officer came aboard with his men, and fifteen minutes 
later started back down the gangplank of the dock. 
In the interval he had put on a Sam Browne belt. 
There came a roar from his colonel who stood near me. 
"Get back on the ship and take off that belt. Where 
do you think you are, in France ?" 

This hinted at rites and mysteries that were beyond 
my ken. Henry Ford had failed in his effort to get the 
boys out of the trenches by Christmas. I began to 
suspect that getting the boys into the trenches before 
the next Christmas would want a bit of doing, until we 
were all taught how to dress before we could fight a 
German. 

Some day some person versed in the psychology of 
the trivial ought to make an exhaustive study of the 
attitude of the military mind toward the Sam Browne 
belt. I am concerned here only with General Pershing's 
attitude. He was for it. Officers leaving for France 
could not wear the belt. It was not a part of their 
equipment. No provision was made for supplying 
them. But when they touched the foreign strand they 
must have one. It was General Pershing's orders, and 
whatever else may be said of his orders, they were 
obeyed. He commanded and everybody knew it to 
the uttermost fringes of his authority. 



PERSHING 257 

At each of the base ports in France a supply of Sam 
Browne belts was kept on hand for sale to arriving 
officers. In France we were considered half naked if we 
did not wear it at all times and on all occasions. Even 
in the far rear of the army along the line of the S.O.S. 
the disappointed lads who had been hung up in their 
desire to get to the front, in their quiet and peaceful 
messes at dinner wore the Sam Browne. It was Gen- 
eral Pershing's orders. 

But when we got home again we were met at the 
dock in Hoboken with a large pink printed order in- 
forming us in heavy black type that on no account 
must we leave the transport wearing Sam Browne 
belts, under penalties and provisions made and pro- 
vided. Officers were stationed at the gangways as we 
came ashore to see that the order was carried out and 
obeyed. 

But when General Pershing came home there was no 
one to tell him to take his belt off and he continued to 
wear it right along until he was made Chief-of-Staff of 
the army. Then he didn't even hesitate. One of his 
very first orders was : "On and after July 15, 1921, the 
Sam Browne belt will be worn at all times by all com- 
missioned officers outside their quarters when in 
service coat, and with the O.D. shirt if under arms. . . . 
The Liberty belt now obtainable from the Quarter- 
master Corps is an authorized form of the Sam Browne 
belt." 

General Pershing has done for the Sam Browne belt 



258 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

what Kosciusko and George Washington and Patrick 
Henry did for liberty, what Lincoln did for the Union, 
what "Babe" Ruth has done for the home run — he 
has attached his name and fame to it ; he has raised it 
to a high estate among us. It is his great war souvenir. 

But in my preoccupation with this great triumph of 
army dress reform I have drifted away from other and 
lesser things that have contributed to an impression of 
the aspect of General Pershing's characteristics that I 
share with so many who served under him in France, 
and who never came in intimate contact with him. We 
had neither the desire nor the competency to appraise 
his military capacities and qualities. That wasn't any 
of our business. He was the head of the show, and 
what he said went, and we knew it. What we were 
interested in and wanted to know about were his quali- 
ties and idiosyncrasies as they affected us. We wanted 
to run with the grain, not against it. We learned early 
that he cared about the niceties of dress. 

I crossed the North Atlantic Ocean bareheaded in 
one of the coldest Januarys in the history of the world, 
because of one of his orders. He had forbidden the use 
of campaign hats in France, and I knew it, so I didn't 
buy one when I started over. The first order issued on 
the transport was that campaign hats and campaign 
hats only should be w^orn on the voyage across. I was 
just whipsawed. 

I was always being reminded of my clothes, indi- 
rectly and informally, but traceable back through 



PERSHING 259 

military channels to General Pershing. Of course, he 
never knew anything about or heard of the service 
coat or tunic that I got in Paris, but he had so impreg- 
nated and impressed those who had been in contact 
with him that he didn't have to see it to have the news 
reach me as to what he would have thought about it 
and said about it if he had seen it. Through some mis- 
adventure or lack-wittedness on the part of the French 
tailor the buttons were sewn on upside down. The 
eagles with outspread wings were standing on their 
heads. I thought I would never hear the end of it. For 
the sake of the record I wish I had kept an actual count 
of the number of times I was accosted : "Better not 
let the Old Man see those buttons," or, "Say, you are 
taking a big chance if the General ever lays his eyes on 
you. He'll spot those buttons a mile off." 

I fear I very nearly spoiled the war for one officer 
whom I saw frequently and who became a closely 
attached subordinate of General Pershing, for I dug 
in on the button line and never did have them reversed. 
But I was not foolhardy. I had been impressed. I 
didn't throw myself in the way of General Pershing. I 
had two narrow squeaks but got away unscathed. The 
first was at MoUien-au-Bois when the Thirty-Third 
Division lay there. General Pershing came up one day 
to distribute some decorations. An alert M.P. warned 
me of his presence and I lay below the horizon until he 
left. I was not alone, either. The second time was 
when I ran into Ligny and found First Army Head- 



26o WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

quarters and General Pershing there. I walked straight 
into the lion's den, all unknowing. One of the aides 
said, "Captain, your buttons are upside down," but I 
was used to that and flitted before harm could befall 
me. 

There were other indications and signs, too, that 
percolated through the army of the interest in dress 
that was felt by the high command. They came 
through to us as matters which General Pershing set 
store by. There was a ban on cord breeches lighter in 
color than the khaki tunic, until it was discovered that 
the General had adopted this English fashion. To wear 
a service coat or tunic with a slit, or as the tailors call 
it, a vent, in the back was almost as heinous an offense 
as giving information to the enemy, until again Gen- 
eral Pershing was converted to it. I think it never 
became regulation. 

And as for the man who sought to have bellows 
pockets on his jacket, he had swapped his nationality 
for a mess of pottage. I could go on and cite other 
instances of this interest in the niceties of dress that so 
impressed me as one of General Pershing's major con- 
cerns. Take, for example, the complex case of the 
boot, the puttee and the leggin and their relationship 
to the spur. Much might be said about that, but I 
refrain. A japery ran about for a time: "Why do 
aviators wear spurs ? " The answer was : " So that they 
will not be mistaken for cavalrymen." 

Now I have to cite by way of confirmation of the 



PERSHING 261 

General's interests, first, the pictorial record of his 
sartorial rise and progress through the war. Even if 
he did not altogether succeed in making the body of 
officers of the army a daily hint from Paris to the Allies 
and the cruel foe, he at least succeeded in reaching new 
high altitude levels in his own attire. I submit that he 
was the best-dressed man on our side that the war 
produced. The change and the progress are indicated 
by the two portraits that precede this chapter. One 
of them was taken before the General went to France, 
the other after his enlightening experience abroad. 

I now summon as a witness Brigadier-General 
Charles G. Dawes, Pershing's great friend and admirer, 
whose experience was my experience. He confirms my 
impression. He did not discover General Pershing's 
zeal for the niceties of dress by indirection and hear- 
say as I did, but directly and at first hand. He wrote 
in his diary that General Pershing's mind "is certainly 
open to details, no matter how impressive the sur- 
roundings," and tells this story: 

"After he [Pershing] had finished his conference with 
General Foch, he was standing across the road from me 
and some Frenchmen, with General Harbord, waiting 
for Foch to take his automobile for his trip to Abbe- 
ville to see Haig. I saw him looking at me, notwith- 
standing the sound of the cannon, and the general 
surroundings, with the look of mingled friendliness, 
admonition, and concern which characterizes his ex- 
pression during some of my interviews with his better- 



262 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

disciplined military associates. It led me to make a 
hasty self-appraisement of my attitude, in which, how- 
ever, I could surmise no fault. He spoke to Harbord 
and the latter walked across the road to me. As Har- 
bord carefully buttoned up my overcoat, which was 
opened, including the hooks at the top, he murmured 
in my ear, 'This is a hell of a job for a Chief-of-Staff — 
but the General told me to do it.' " 

I am indebted to General Dawes for so amply con- 
firming my impression and for setting down the 
incident in his book, ''A Journal of the Great War." 
It was just the touch I needed to give me complete 
confidence in the validity of my own vivid impression. 

By way of further confirmation, there are the orders 
signed John J. Pershing, General of the Armies, that 
began to issue from the War Department as soon as 
the General became Chief-of-Staff. The bestowal of 
the Sam Browne belt was one. Another permitted the 
use of tabards attached to the bugles or trumpets of 
company buglers. A tabard is a rectangular banner of 
silk or cloth hanging from the crook of a bugle or trum- 
pet and its design follows that of the coat of arms or 
badge of the organization as approved for use on the 
organization colors or standard. The buglers at Gen- 
eral Pershing's headquarters in France were permitted 
tabards. They were a novelty and decorative to a 
degree. Now they are regulation. Another statement 
from the War Department announced that the present 
high, stiff collar of the uniform coat would not be 



PERSHING 263 

abandoned in favor of the open-throat roll collar such 
as the English wear. Other orders related to the wear- 
ing of white uniforms, badges, and decorations. 

I have confined myself perforce to polishing and 
presenting this one facet of our hero's personality 
because it was the one bright impression of him that I 
brought away from France with me. Of his qualities 
as a strategist, a tactician, an administrator, I have 
no material for judgment. Certainly in France and 
since he came home he has kept his head, he has not 
been indiscreet in any small particular. He has not 
talked. He has not gone out of his way to seek popular 
applause. He has not tried to make occasion for ova- 
tions. He has spoken only when called upon to speak, 
and when he has said anything he has confined him- 
self to the business in hand. The armies in France did 
not idolize or idealize him. They did not bring him 
home as a great popular hero. They did not want him 
as a candidate for President. 

But this attitude of indifference was not confined to 
General Pershing; it extended to all the other com- 
manding generals of our forces in France. The great 
bulk of the men who went over were glad enough to be 
through with military ways and professional military 
men when the end came. I think they gave General 
Pershing full credit for everything he did in France. I 
think the common feeling among them was and is 
that he did his part as well as he knew how, and they 
did theirs in the same fashion. Nobody was inclined 
to take the rnatter any further. So here it rests, 



TAFT: IN PORT AT LAST. 

At last Mr. Taft has come to his journey's end. He 
has been a long time on the way. Ever since I have 
known him, and that is since 1905, he has been the 
"logical candidate for the next vacancy on the Su- 
preme Bench." Now we can hope to see his most fa- 
mous possession, his judicial temperament, functioning. 
It has been long maturing and preparing for the test. 
But I want Mr. Taft to have his full due and credit. 

It is now widely and commonly said that he is Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court. That is inaccurate. 
There is no such place, post, or employment under our 
form of government. Mr. Taft is Chief Justice of the 
United States. His colleagues are Associate Justices of 
the Supreme Court of the United States. There are 
two great offices at the top of the heap as we have 
organized society on this continent : President of the 
United States and head of the executive branch ; Chief 
Justice of the United States and head of the judicial 
branch. Mr. Taft is the first man in our history to have 
been elected to the one and appointed to the other. 

His being President was an unhappy adventure. He 
approached it reluctantly ; he never was at ease when 
he was in the White House, and he never got any fun 
or satisfaction out of the job. Only Vermont and Utah 
(or was it Nevada ?) wanted him to have a second term. 

His coming to be President at all was as odd a thing 




THE CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES 



i 



TAFT 265 

as ever happened within my knowledge of politics. It 
was known to all the world, toward the end of 1907, 
that Mr. Roosevelt would award the Republican nom- 
ination for the presidency in 1908. There was to be no 
contest about it. Mr. Roosevelt was to give it to the 
one he loved best. He made up his mind slowly be- 
cause he wanted a winner. When he first talked with 
me about his problem, he had narrowed his choice 
down to Mr. Taft and Mr. Root. He weighed and bal- 
anced those two, one against the other. He talked with 
a good many people first and last who might have a 
slant on public opinion. Mr. Root was sent to South 
America to "get a reputation," as the saying is. When 
he got back home he went out to Kansas City and 
made a speech to the Knife and Fork Club. That had 
been arranged, too. But the Middle West didn't rise. 
Nobody rose. Mr. Roosevelt began to turn more 
toward Mr. Taft, and to complain that Mr. Root "had 
no sense of a public." 

During those days Mr. Taft knew, of course, what 
was going on, and he used to tell his confidants that he 
would never become a candidate for the nomination ; 
that he had no aspirations to become President ; that 
his whole ambition and desire would be completely 
satisfied if he could be on the Supreme Court. He 
wanted that and nothing else. A place on the highest 
bench was the summit of every lawyer's desire, he was 
a lawyer and nothing else, and eager only for prefer- 
ment on the judicial side. But in the end he was over- 



266 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

borne, and capitulated as was too often the ca3e later 
when urgent pressure was applied. 

He did not make an eager candidate after he was 
nominated. He didn't like campaigning for votes. He 
didn't like standing up and telling the people what a 
wonder he was, and how they would all be prosperous 
and happy and have good crops and good business if 
they made him President. He didn't believe it himself. 
He didn't like any of the campaign hokum. It all bored 
him to extinction. He was blue and depressed about 
his prospects throughout the canvass. 

I joined him at Cincinnati when he began his first 
speech-making trip. It was very hot. Mr. Taft had a 
special train. His first speech was to be made at George 
Ade's farm near Brook, Indiana. 

In those days the candidate had a girth and con- 
formation that required freshly pressed trousers every 
day, especially in the hot weather, so he had a Filipino 
valet. But some of the shrewd boys decided that Felipe 
should not be taken on the journey through the corn 
belt. The honest yeomanry of those parts might take 
it amiss. The little brown brother sneaked aboard the 
train, however, and had to be shoved ofT when he was 
discovered after an hour or so. Freed of its incriminat- 
ing freight, the train went on to Brook. There fol- 
lowed a dusty ride out to the farm, where all the people 
from far and near had gathered, a fine lot of men and 
women, just about the best and soundest we produce. 

Outdoors on a rough platform under the trees Mr. 



TAFT 267 

Taft fired his opening gun of the campaign. At this 
late day no harm can come of saying that it was a 
"dud," The shell did not explode. Mr. Taft read to 
them from a typewritten manuscript his views on the 
Philippines, and an adequate coast defense system. It 
was something dire. The temperature went down, 
down, down. The Indiana politicians who were run- 
ning the show were making the S.O.S. signal. They 
rushed up their reserves. Jim Watson was called on to 
save the day. He done noble. He had nothing to say 
and he said it grandly. He ran his fingers through his 
hyacinthine locks, pulled out the vox humana stop, and 
gave them the grand old dope, the grand old party, the 
grand old flag — the heart-warming stuff they had 
come to hear. 

The whole performance was symbolical, was it not, 
in a way, of the subsequent history of the Taft Admin- 
istration ? He was always getting in holes and having 
to be pulled out. At Brook that day, the cognoscenti 
there assembled came to the conclusion, later amply 
verified, that Mr. Taft was no politician, 

Mr. Taft was never detachedly appraised until he 
became President. While he was in the Philippines and 
in the War Department, he was in the shadow of other 
men. He was an agent, not a principal. Everybody 
liked him. He soon became known as one of the honest- 
est men that ever stepped foot in Washington, and as 
lacking in all craft and guile as a child. He was too 
frank and naive for his own good. He believed — oh, 



268 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

so simply — that there was such a thing as friendship 
in pohtics. And no obUgation rests more heavily on 
Mr. Taft's shoulders than the obligations of friend- 
ship. 

When he came to the White House there was not a 
more popular man in public life in the United States. 
He hadn't a single political enemy. Democrats vied 
with Republicans in expressing their good-will. It 
didn't last long — just through the Payne- Aldrich 
Tariff session and the Winona speech. After that 
everything seemed to go wrong. Mr. Taft couldn't 
please anybody. He tried so hard to please everybody. 

I recall two criticisms of that period, so obviously 
intended to be fair and so accurately describing Mr. 
Taft's character and characteristics in the White 
House as to have stood the test of time. First : "Mr. 
Taft has tried to be everybody's friend, and as usual 
in such cases he has not succeeded in fully pleasing 
anybody. The public knows that he is honest and sin- 
cere and patriotic, but it is not sure that he measures 
up to the full requirements of his office. It would like a 
little more independence, a little less partisanship, a 
little more reliance upon his own common sense, a little 
more courage, a little less veneration for the elder 
statesmen of the Republican Party, and a little less 
organization politics." 

And this : "The peculiar weakness of Mr. Taft as a 
directing force, the peculiar deficiency he has exhibited 
in respect of political sagacity, has never been more 



TAFT 269 

conspicuous than in this complacent view of his own 
defeat. After staking his prestige on a particular issue, 
after identifying himself with a legislative programme 
in such a way as to leave no doubt that he regarded its 
adoption as indispensable to the success of his admin- 
istration, he seems ready to accept defeat as a thing 
for which he cannot justly be held in any way account- 
able. . . . He has shown a certain mechanicalness, a cer- 
tain want of that vital touch without which a powerful 
hold on public affairs is impossible. . . . A large part of 
the influence that a President can wield, through the 
pressure of public opinion, comes from the fact that the 
nation listens to him as it listens to no one else. But 
the retention of this position of advantage, the con- 
tinued possession of this great leverage bestowed upon 
him by his office, is dependent upon his husbanding of 
his resources. If he is ready to speak every day in the 
week and to point out his thoughts or feelings just as 
they happen to come, he will soon find his audience 
wanting. A want of perspective, a lack of the feeling 
that some things must be done and that others are best 
left alone, has been no small part of the cause of Mr. 
Taft's troubles." 

I have chosen to revive here these two acute com- 
ments because they fairly represent the intelligent 
criticism to which Mr. Taft was subjected. He has 
none of the salient traits that mark out and distinguish 
natural leaders of men in the field of politics. He came 
into office on the strength of the political prestige and 



270 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

authority of Theodore Roosevelt, and he received a 
larger vote than was ever cast prior to that time for 
any other President of the United States. 

He did the best he could. God help him, he could do 
no more. He went Into It to oblige a friend. He had 
no other desire than the best Interests of the United 
States. He was out of his element. He had no political 
sagacity to begin with, and he never acquired any. He 
could never accommodate himself to leadership, and 
the President must be a leader. Mr. Taft used to call 
himself "titular leader" of his party. 

But I think the new Chief Justice will be happy in 
the Supreme Court. He will not have to consider poli- 
tics, or expediency, or the claims of personal friend- 
ship, or be subjected to powerful and urgent pressure 
from any quarter. These have always proved his 
stumbling-block and the cause of his undoing. Hereto- 
fore through his career since 1900 he has been doing 
what other people wanted him to do, a draft man, first 
in the Philippines, then Secretary of War, then the 
presidency. All the time his heart and his Inclination 
were turned toward the bench. Where the heart is 
there also the treasure lies. A true saying. 

Now, at last, Mr. Taft has got his chance to follow 
on where his heart has been calling. He has come to 
hold the high place in the most peaceful haven that 
this troubled world affords. Having once reached it, 
the traveler lives In a serene, untroubled air. He is as 
immune from criticism as from punishment for his 



TAFT 271 

actions. He is beyond the reach of all mankind ; sub- 
ject only to the laws of God and the dictates of his own 
conscience. There he may dwell until gathered to his 
fathers, for though after a certain specified period he, if 
he so desires, may retire on full pay, there is no manda- 
tory requirement that he shall ever give over the work 
John Marshall began. 

The life of a Justice on the bench of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, as Mr. Taft well knows, 
comes as near being an ideal way to spend one's al- 
lotted span of years on this sphere as is permitted in 
this sadly ordered world. If he be properly selected, 
the Justice loves his work. What he has to do affords 
him the chief pleasure of his days. He has the con- 
sciousness that it is important work ; that his decisions 
will affect for good or ill not only men now living, but, 
in many instances, the unborn sons of men. Inherent 
in a seat on the bench are great powers and grave 
responsibilities, which may be exercised in absolute 
detachment from all worldly interests and without fear, 
favor, or hope of reward. The Justice is far removed 
from daily temptation, from importunities and plead- 
ings, from the demands and exactions of friendships, 
and from all the little intimate things that swerve the 
cold processes of reason in the forming of the average 
man's judgments. 

The haven into which Mr. Taft has come is the only 
institution of our government with which long and 
close contact and acquaintance do not breed famili- 



272 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

arity or an easy contempt. Persons much about the 
Capitol at Washington come quickly, too quickly in 
most instances, to view the daily life and processes of 
the House of Representatives and the Senate with a 
full and keen appreciation of their defects and weak- 
nesses. Living here without a proper perspective, the 
tendency is to exaggerate the little bits of cowardice, 
the indirect purposes and motives, and not to see and 
remember that at the core both branches of the 
national legislature are essentially sound. 

One even comes in time to view the presidency with- 
out illusions. Behind all the hurrah and the clamor is a 
greatly overworked human being like ourselves sub- 
ject to the temptations and perils and trials that beset 
all of us, whether we be eighteen-dollar-a-week book- 
keepers in grain and feed stores or directors of great 
enterprises involving millions of capital. 

When Mr. Taft became Chief Justice, he discovered 
that he had inherited a "body servant." The ofhce 
seems to be hereditary, for some of the men now serv- 
ing were preceded by their fathers. They are all 
negroes, of course, and they know the forms and tradi- 
tions of the court to the last fine point. Under the 
guise of serving, they rule the private life of the Jus- 
tices with the iron authority and discipline that per- 
sons in the South have long been familiar with in old 
family servitors. Mr. Justice Woods, who was ap- 
pointed to the bench by President Garfield, is reported 
to have said soon after he took his place on the court : 



TAFT 273 

**My body-servant Is the most annoying thing I 
have experienced. The fellow Is the first man I see In 
tht morning and the last man I see at night. He forces 
his way Into my bedroom In the morning and orders 
me down to breakfast, taking my order himself to the 
cook. I cannot get rid of him In any way. He haunts 
me all the time. I try to think of places to send him, 
but he is back again as quick as lightning. That fellow 
will be the death of me." 

One of the stock and prized anecdotes about the 
court relates to a young lawyer who was very earnestly 
pleading to establish a point before the court. While 
he was still in the full course of his appeal, one of the 
Justices leaned over the bench and Interjected crisply : 

"But that is not the law." 

The young lawyer was abashed, but only for a mo- 
ment before he retorted, "It was the law until the 
court spoke." The sum of our attitude toward the 
court has never been better exemplified. 

Mr. Taft, as President, himself Illustrated this atti- 
tude. In a special message on the Interstate commerce 
and anti-trust laws, communicated to the two Houses 
of Congress on January 7, 1910, Mr. Taft said among 
other things: "Now the public, and especially the 
business public, are to rid themselves of the idea that 
such a distinction (as between * good trusts ' and * bad 
trusts' or as between ' reasonable* restraint of trade 
and 'unreasonable' restraint of trade) is practicable 
or can be introduced into the statute. Certainly, 



274 WASHINGTON CLOSE-UPS 

under the present anti-trust law no such distinction 
exists. ..." 

The Supreme Court, as is well known, took an op- 
posing view in the Standard Oil opinion. A group of 
persons so large as to be called fairly a throng went to 
the White House on the day following the court's 
decision, and sought audience with President Taft. 
Each of them had equipped himself with a copy of the 
message containing this paragraph. They all wanted 
some comment from Mr. Taft. Let me quote the cur- 
rent accounts in the newspapers, which I know to be 
trustworthy : 

"When it was called to the President's attention 
that in his message to Congress of January 7, 1910, he 
expressed doubt of the practicability of defining 'good* 
and ' bad ' trusts, he said that whatever had been his 
opinions, he abandoned them when the Supreme Court 
spoke. 

"The President would not discuss the decision at all. 
He directed the attention of some of his callers to the 
fact that, before a decision is handed down by the 
Supreme Court, every one is entitled to have his 
personal view of the matter, but that after the decision 
has been rendered it is the law of the land, and every 
law-abiding citizen is bound to bow to it." 

Mr. Taft has a great respect for law, authority, and 
orderly processes, and I am sure he will find it grateful 
and refreshing to be in an atmosphere and environ- 
ment where he can function in a vacuum free from 



TAFT 275 

pressure, free from naggings, and reach conclusions 
and decisions that nobody can or will question. It is 
the ideal condition he has long sought. If he doesn't 
make secure and lasting his own reputation, it will be 
his own fault. 



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